Born To Bleed
by Soul of Ashes
Summary: Eventual MxM, drug use, graphic. A dangerous drug kills a churchful of people and starts hitting the streets. The feds call in Constantine, who feels the job is just the work of vice, not demons, until he's forced to work with a notorious half-breed.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note:** Sorry, I only watched Constantine the movie; I haven't read the graphic novel or whatever the movie was based from. It's kind of something I've wanted to try out. I know almost next to nothing about Constantine other than what I've seen in the movie, so you'll have to bear with me for a bit. Also, I'm making most of the places up and I'll try to make it as suspenseful as I can... I'm new at this kinda thing.

**Born to Bleed  
Chapter 1**

The door hinge squealed open as a man in a dark overcoat and a rumpled, two-day-worn suit walked onto the grisly scene. He casually lifted the yellow tape across the doorway and stepped under with a slight cough. His unpolished, scuffed shoe accidently kicked a limp, pale arm hanging just beyond the threshold. The man's dark hair hung over cunning, clever dark eyes that narrowed as he took in everything, nostrils flaring at the stench of decaying bodies, his hands hanging at his sides before they restlessly dipped into his overcoat pocket. A cold wind blew in from outside, momentarily relieving the scent of death from the room.

A second man walked over, his suit pressed and clean and a green look about his cleanshaven face and hawk-like eyes. He was tall, lanky, and a holster sat at his hip. He flipped open a badge and offered a glimpse at his Federal Agent identification. "Constantine?"

The dark-eyed man looked over. "Who's asking?"

"Agent Vascoe with Homeland Security. Are you John Constantine?" the man persisted.

"If I wasn't, I wouldn't be interested in talking to you." A cigarette glowed hanging between his lips now. His eyes narrowed as he took in the scene again, inhaling - the tobacco cleared the scent of death away. "What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?"

More specifically, Constantine wanted to know why he was called out of his home in the city to this shithole church in the middle of February in the middle of nowhere. He wanted to know what the pile of bodies around the room, slowly rotting with no apparent trauma on any of them, had to do with demon exorcisms. He stared at the gathering of dead, ranging from the young to the oldest in sight, a man in his mid-fifties, graying hair neatly cut, his head leaned back with pink foam dribbling from the corners of his mouth. They all wore whatever you would expect your average farmer folk would wear this time of year; some of them still wearing winter jackets, hats, scarves.

It was a small church on the far end of Eastunder. Back when Constantine first moved here, he used to drive out to the creamie shop on the main road and get himself a butterscotch flavor twist. It was February now. The creamies was closed and the road had just been ploughed, and outside in the chilly air, the snow still fell.

"Mass suicide by poisoning," Agent Vascoe murmured, reaching for his breast pocket for a handkerchief. He put it over his face. "We suspect some kind of religious cult was involved... although this is a Christian church."

Constantine looked around a bit more closely. "You want me to find your culprit, go ask your Charles Manson wannabe. He's probably the guy with the biggest grin, laughing his way to Hell right now."

Agent Vascoe scowled, apparently not finding that funny. "Listen, Constantine. I don't know what kind of curio shop you run there, but I was told you were the best guy to call in these kinds of situations-"

"They were wrong. What you've got here is some folks who took the Bible bit about poison too literally. Anyone could tell you that." Although Constantine's voice was thick with venomous contempt, his time was not entirely wasted. He walked through the collection of dead, stepping over each body quite casually. Although he saw no demons floating around here, reaping from the deaths, he was confused. Suicides usually went straight to one place: Hell. It was against God's will to take your own life. Usually, demons themselves came to collect the souls of those who did so. But he could smell no sulfur and saw no unnatural shadows hovering at the edges of the room, cursing Constantine's name.

He walked to the altar, where a wooden cross hung with a purple velvet cloth was illuminated by electric candle light from below. John Constantine hovered between remorse and annoyance at the cleverness of demons. Peering down at what lay on the altar, he at least understood how the poor believers of this mistaken faith had offed themselves.

There was an almost empty punch bowl of clear liquid sitting on a plain white table cloth over the altar. Assuming it was water, then there were small unlabeled sealed packets opened beside a stack of paper disposable cups. There was nothing here suggesting a supernatural occurence. Instead, he looked around the modest altar for other clues. Nothing. He knelt down, ignoring the body laying near the altar after a quick glance. It was a woman. She held the hand of a man beside her. A gold ring circled around the man's left hand.

Under the altar, he found that someone had left an unopened packet on the floor in their haste. He picked it up and shook it. It sounded like it was filled with powder.

He turned to Agent Vascoe and waggled the packet. "The only sin here is sloth. Take this to your forensics team, Agent Vascal."

"Vascoe," he corrected stiffly, pulling on a blue rubber glove and sliding the packet into a little plastic bag. He then handed it off to another person. "I'll need your fingerprints, Constantine!"

But the man in black was already heading out the door, flicking ashes into the freshly fallen snow before disappearing into the filthy city cab that would take him home.

* * *

A day later, the news hit the town like a boulder. But the Stranger had no idea who was talking about it until he came inside from the cold to read the responses of the cattle.

The restaurant was a bit more crowded than he would have liked. Numb fingers made him aware of the cold, but he had more important matters occupying his mind. Though every movement caused him pain from being outside all night, he reminded that failure to report anything at all was worse than suffering a bit of frostbite to give an accurate account of the town's status. He forced himself to seat at a booth near the window, even though he was not much for the view. The daylight hurt his eyes and the snow falling outside did little to reduce the feeling of cold.

The snow had been falling everywhere since yesterday. The little TV was on, and a news station was blaring. The man who sat in the window booth ignored it, waiting for a bracing glass of brandy before he would again head outside.

However, the longer he spent nursing the drink, the more he overheard the conversation of the couple nearby. They were young, college bred students, bundled with cups of cocoa and enjoying the novelty of eating in a small town restaurant on their way to a snowy vacation.

"I can't believe that happened here," said the youthful woman, her face pinched and academic. "Right when we're about to have our vacation."

"They're ruling it now as a mass suicide?" The guy shook his head, then lowered his voice and said something about the sanity of the rest of the people here.

"Sounds really familiar. Ick, do we really have to talk about this?"

The man sat quietly in his booth and hovered between wanting to run and wanting to stay very still and just enjoy his brandy when it came. If anyonre recognized him, it would only take a couple sentences to make the connection between his arrival and the new sermons at the church, a small number of whom people had stopped attending.

Almost half-way through his first glass, the Stranger felt a stab of pain between his verbra. He straightened his back at once, muffling a cry just in time. It was a call to return. Gasping a little with each movement, he put some crumpled money on the booth by the drink and started out the door. To make his report, he would have to go into the woods again. He only hoped that the snow would fall quickly enough to cover his tracks.

* * *

In the dusty, blue-gray gloom of Devil May Cry, the phone began to ring.

The bathroom door was already open. Dante Sparda, proprietor of Devil May Cry, opened his eyes and stared at the offensive darkness blocking his sight. Memory was slow in coming, but he pulled the music magazine off of his eyes and lifted his stiff neck from the back of the chair. He glared at the telephone, then reached with a foot to flip it off the hook and onto his palm.

"What?" he asked in annoyance, not with accordance to his usually cheerful greeting.

"I-I'm sorry. It's Enzo. I got a call from the FBI. The fucking F-B-I! Do you believe it? Something about a mass suicide in Eastunder. Bunch of folks in a church offed themselves with some kind of weird powder, but they can't identify it and the guy was saying it's outside their knowledge, so they need someone... familiar with supernatural stuff to look at it."

Dante yawned, scratching his stomach where his belt had been cutting into his belly a little. "They willing to revoke some of my traffic violations?"

"Um... I don't think so. But because of the 'urgency of the matter', they're willing to pay you right up front if you come take a look and tell them what is up with the stuff. Tell them if it's been magicked or if some smartass smuggled it out of the Demon World."

His eyes closed against the brilliance of the snow outside his huge windows. Against his better judgment, he muttered, "Fine." It had to be something good if the damn government was yanking him out of his bear cave. "Where is it?"

* * *

John Constantine had pocketed one of the empty packets and got a liquid sample from what was left in the very corners of it, in his own modest laboratory to investigate it. Very few things escaped John Constantine's suspicion. He had ordered Agent Vascoe with a phone call to fax him the material make-up of the powder poison. It came back inconclusive.

John loved science as a kid. It gave him answers about the world around him that were not so terrifying as the one he had discovered for himself. His eyes saw what few other humans could escape without losing their sanity. Sadly, one might even say he was used the horrors of Hell. They walked around him almost daily, going about their evil business, fighting their war. John Constantine's only business was to keep demons from overpopulating Earth.

He gently shook the liquid sample of the powder in a little vial. He wondered if it would be too dangerous to take it himself. After all, he had killed himself before. Two minutes dead had made him destined for Hell anyway. Maybe he could pop in and say hello to old Lucy and explain that he was having a bit of a science experiment and "could you please let me go back to turn the bunsen burner off?"

He shook his head and grunted. If he remembered anything at all about Lucifer, he would not let John go if he happened to stumble into Hell for too long. If this stuff really was as poisonous as it seemed, it would be better off to test its origins without eating it. The only way to do that was to match it against Holy artifacts... and pray for a survivable side effect.

He prepped a solution of holy water with silver from a blessed cross melted down and put it in a safe, cleansed metal container. With a ginger hand, he got a sample of the poison with an ampoule. With but a drop, it might not be enough to see any kind of reaction - if any.

It might still be just a simple man-made drug that did not match any database record in the federal archives.

He applied a drop, and waited a safe distance. He tried not to feel too ridiculous wearing the goggles. He felt a nauseating sense of nostalgia for high school chemistry - which he failed. He waited ten minutes, then applied another drop... and the smoke rose slowly but noticably. He tried not to breathe it in. But the smoke intensified, curling toward the ceiling. A rogue breeze suddenly came in through that damn drafty window and he sucked in a breath - too late.

An hour later he got up off the floor and staggered to the phone, which was ringing. He groaned, "Constantine."

"John, it's me."

"Reynold?" He was one of his new obsessive followers - a nerdy occult drop-out who had a small college degree under his belt. He was twenty-four and believed if he followed Constantine around long enough, some of his gifts would rub off. Constantine could (and refused to) spend hours explaining to him that it did not work that way and if Reynold actually paid attention in his theology courses, he probably would not want Constantine's breed of karma.

Of his few and far between uses, the boy sniffed out work. He sometimes got him interesting tabloid articles that did not fit the usual 'style' of that month. He hunted down paranormal activity like a hound, almost as relentlessly as he played World of Warcraft.

"Something really fuckin' weird is going on. I heard that you got called in by the Feds to look into that mass suicide in Eastunder. So I got online and started Googling about that. Then I searched for related issues going on. I even had to join a weird fanzine about some drug or whatever."

"So?" John Constantine was doubting Reynold's nose on this one.

"I'm just saying."

"You're not saying much except you spend way too much time Googling on the internet. Get to the point."

"Are you okay? You sound like crud." _Crud?_

John struggled to put voice to his thoughts, but only achieved some frustrating vagueness. His head was rolling across the floor - or so it felt. The solution on the table had stopped smoking at least. Which reminded him of what he was trying to say.

"I was testing it."

"It?"

"The drug. Poison. Powder, whatever. From the Eastunder church."

"You stole some? Badass! But - wait - you still haven't told me if you're okay."

"Don't worry; you don't need to come out of your gamer's cave to play nursemaid." Constantine checked the time and rolled down his one sleeve.

"Do you wanna hear about what I found out or not?"

"Fine. I'll humor you for a second." Even if it wasn't related, the information would enlightening about other topics - like how misguided, ill-meaning humans tried to use crap like reiki and transendental meditation to "reach God" and ended up sticking their toes into Hell instead, resulting in some serious paranormal foot fungus, so to speak.

"The drug of choice is new on the street and on this site, they call it shadow dust or something."

"What's it look like?"

"Um. Users write that it looks black powder, like gunpowder or finely ground pepper. It's hard to say 'cause people who use it say it tastes like different things, like food or drinks they like. It royally messes other people up. I read up like, some people talk in different languages, walk on water, breathe fire. Pretty trippy stuff."

The description matched; the stuff was pretty unmistakably black. "You've just described a shitload of others hallucinogenic substances, Reynold. Except the part about tasting things. Anything else?"

"Hold on. I'm reading through it now."

"How else can it be taken?"

"Oh, yeah! Mix it in water, orally, or intraveinously." Reynold hesitated. There was the sound of rapid typing as on a computer keyboard on the other line. It went on for a few seconds, then Reynold said, "Sorry. I'm doing like, ten things at once. But that's all I had to say so far. Do you want to me to keep looking for stuff about it?"

"Find other names for it, cross-reference, do whatever. Fax 'em to me and don't let anyone else see what you're doing. Thanks, Rey." He rubbed his eyes after pulling off the rubber gloves with his teeth. As soon as he hung up, the phone rang again. This time it was from Agent Vascoe himself.

"Agent Vascoe. Mr. Constantine. We've found the source of the powder. It's... troubling. Did you get the fax?"

"Yes. I'm surprised. But supernatural drugs are not my specialty... Agent Vascoe."

"The drug isn't your concern right now. You have a new job now. We're calling in a... specialist, if you will. We've got reports about a man who became a new elder at the church where the suicides took place, but tracking him down in this weather is becoming problematic. We need him to find the guy, but we also need you to perform the necessary exorcisms should it occur."

"Can't you just find out where he's holed up? Can't be too hard in a ditch of a town like that."

"It's not that simple. He's disappeared. The last time he was spotted was leaving a restaurant, then someone else said they saw him go down the street. Another person says they say him leave the street and down under the bridge, into the woods. Dogs can't find his scent, can't track him at all."

"Sorry. Can't help you."

"That's what our specialist is for. You're going to be working with him."

John Constantine grimaced. When Vascoe mentioned specialist, he could only envision an older, slightly fatter version of Reynold boasting a large crucifix, a bag of supernatural gadgetry, a stern look and wireframe glasses to loan him a more learned expression. "Great. Who the hell is he?"

"A devil hunter named Dante Sparda. He's flying in from New York."

"Quite a mouthful. How come I've never heard of him if he's so great?"

"I honestly don't know. He doesn't usually travel outside of his county to work. It's a hotspot for demon activity and he gets a lot of business there."

John sighed dramatically, still reeling a bit from his experiment. "When do I meet him?"

"Five minutes. We'll pick the both of you up in a few hours to get started; the weather doesn't indicate it's going to let up any time soon and driving is difficult."

"He's coming _here_?" John went rigid. He hardly knew the guy and he was going to show up and he had to entertain him for a few hours while the Feds grew a pair just to drive through a little snow? "Thanks for the warning. And I thought he was driving from New York."

"I was trying to call you before but you didn't pick up for hours."

John looked at his watch again. Shit. Instead of being nine-o'-clock at night, it was nine in the morning. His stomach grumbled and he looked at the door, a moment of dread washing over him. He had no idea why, but he liked to keep his methods of devil relocation between himself and his private suppliers.

"Constantine, I'd advise you to work closely with him on this one. There is a chance that another, bigger mass suicide is being organized as we speak. This is a dangerous substance we're dealing with and any time lost risks more lives."

What Vascoe didn't say and perhaps didn't even know was that time lost meant more human souls going to Hell... because of this strange shadow dust. Someone was handing it out to mortals and forefitting their privilege to Heaven against their will.

John Constantine knew intimately the price for suicide. He saw with his own eyes the place Lucifer had set aside just for him in that burning land of eternal fire. If he could save someone from it, he would. But there would be no saving the already Damned who were there now. Every last man, woman and child in that church had suffered countless months in there - for time moved differently in Hell than it did in the world of light.

His stomach constricted when he thought of any more going out like that. "I better go play nice, Agent Vascoe."

"Thank you for your assistance. The president appreciates your help."

"Don't thank me just yet, asshole." He hung up without saying goodbye because just then his doorbell buzzed. He left the phone by the cradle, walking to the door to unlock the series of bizarre locks inscripted there. For some reason, he hadn't thought to look through the peephole, or he would have been prepared when the door opened.

He should have looked first because what he saw nearly made him shit his pants. Luckily he pulled a holy water ball and threw it with dead-on accuracy at the demon's face. John had to look twice to make sure he hadn't been mistaken, although every nerve in his body was buzzing with adrenaline. He HAD seen a demon standing there, but when he looked again, all he saw was a man in a red coat and a black turtleneck shirt, leather straps criss-crossing his chest to a massive inconspicuous case over his back. The water cascaded from the tip of the man's nose and snow white hair, which hung over a pair of now very livid blue eyes.

"A handshake would have been nice," commented Dante Sparda. "Is this some sort of tradition you people hold here?"

John stood in front of the doorway, panting. He looked more closely at the man, and - just for an instant - something shimmered over Dante's eyes - turning them red, glowing, unnatural. The holy water dripped harmlessly off his fine, white skin.

John whispered, "Holy shit."

"Maybe it would work better in a glass. Or - no, this is holy _water_." Dante wiped his face off with his gloved hand, careful of the broken pieces of glass. He fixed John Constantine with a long look, understanding quickly dawning on him. "So you can See me."

"You're a fucking halfbreed." John had no mind to remember proper etiquette when dealing with a ringer like this one; half-breeds were not so uncommon in Constantine's line of work. In fact, they were almost the front line of the holy war between God and the Devil. However, there were certain rules they had to abide by... and if he remembered them correctly, this one was clearly not abiding by any of those.

Dante's eyes hardened. He glanced at the archaic symbols carved into the doorframe before he casually stepped inside. "And you're a fucking human. Uh, when do I get to throw water at you again?"

"Vascoe didn't tell me shit about you being half-demon."

"And you're mad because you were a little underinformed. I've been there. Sucks, doesn't it? Oh, and don't feel bad, because Red-White-and-Blue doesn't know either."

"A little uninformed!" John glowered at the half-demon. Every instinct to set him on dragon fire was itching at him. "Are you really Dante Sparda? Is that even your real name, you piece of shit?"

Faster, of course, than John could even See, the white-haired man gripped him by the shirt collar and lifted him clear of the floor, leaving his feet kicking helplessly. His cool blue eyes glittered with what John only hoped was just amusement and not murder.

"If you want to play nice with me, you're going to have to promise not to try any of your fancy weapons on me. I didn't get flown all the way down here, sit two hours on a plane so they could tell me to wait one hour more, get driven here by a man who can barely speak understandable English and missing most of his teeth, just to have a small, weak, untalented man call me names all day long. It's not good for my work atmosphere, okay?"

"Fuck you," John said.

Dante replied, "Fair enough. But if you want to make this even simpler, just stay right here. I'll be back before you know it and all this'll be taken care of. I'll even put in a good word for you."

"This is my job!" John protested. He felt a creeping itch crawling up his lungs. He started coughing as soon as Dante put him down. With shaking fingers, he stumbled away toward his table and lit up a black clove cigarette; a second later he pulled his chair out and sunk into it, puffing away.

Dante watched him for awhile. Then he said with just a bit more gentleness but lacking none of the venom from before, "You're not like other humans I know. Just the same, I want you to know you're not going to survive tramping around in the woods like that. I'm not going to babysit you. You'll just get in my way."

John muttered, looking out his windows, into the snowy world beyond, "I know I'm living on borrowed time - and trust me, I've got some left. I'm going out there, whether you want me to or not."

Dante closed the door behind him and walked over to the science equipment set up. He picked up the vial of liquified shadow dust with its secured stopper. He rolled the little vial over his knuckles while he blithely explored the rest of Constantine's sanctum, glimpsing things here and there. Evaluating everything.

John hissed, "Hey. Do you mind?"

"It's more than I expected," Dante commented, ignoring him completely as spied a small little box. He picked it up and shook it. "What's thi--" The box let loose a horrible screaming sound. Dante chuckled, but put it down quickly. In a few seconds it went silent.

John watched him furtively, getting no more comfortable with him walking around and touching his shit. A half-breed was only half-susceptible to anything in this room. Dante seemed to ignore everything, including the careful sigils he had inscribed on his doorjam to prevent unwanted demonic entry.

"I don't get it. Why are you involved?" John growled. He poured himself a scotch on the little table.

"Involved how?"

"The war. God versus Satan. Demons versus angels. The eternal struggle. Aren't you not supposed to directly interfere?"

Dante Sparda looked gravely at the hidden cupboard that had his various paraphernalia regarding exorcisms - books upon books on his shelves, followed by notebooks filled with John Constantine's own findings and confirmations. He said, "I don't really follow what you mean. I'm a devil hunter because it's what I do."

"It's not what you were born to do."

"Neither were you, buddy."

"Not angels and certainly not devils and especially not their half-breed spawn."

Dante decided to ignore that little insult slide - just this once. He humored the man, while turning to look at him finally. He really was not much to look at. He looked haggard but hardened, knowledgable judging by his extensive readings. He had a dozen books written in latin as far as Dante could tell. He knew John probably did not pay much attention to the family histories of demons, so the Legend of Sparda may have escaped his interest. He had dark hair, intelligent eyes, and a slight build suggesting his work did not really call for a lot of physical activity. And if Dante had bothered to look closer, he would see around him a definitive, oily aura, a stink of sulfur that was only on the surface - a taint of the Demon World.

"My father chose to help mankind. He slew the Demon King, sealed off the Demon World and with it, his power. When my mom concieved us, maybe he was already human - but some of the rules that apply to demons don't apply to me. Other than that, all I know is, I hunt demons where I find them and sometimes I even make money off it. Go me."

John Constantine looked pensively at Dante for awhile. "It's weird. I want to believe you, but most half-breed demons have the propensity to be liars. No, wait. Just hear me out. I'll believe you for now." He glanced at the massive case sheathed to Dante's back, the cherry on his cigarette glowing harshly. "You've seen all my stuff. Now show me what's in that case on your back and, uh, whatever else you may be hiding from me."

With ease, Dante seemed more than happy to comply. He pulled a string near the top of the case that opened a slit wide enough to free the blade and unsheathed a massive double-edged sword almost as tall as Constantine himself. The greasy winter sunlight danced over its polished surface, and the intricate design on the pommel rather fascinated John - only for a second. The skull was grisly, grinning, toothedly leering at those who met its sharp edge. It looked heavy, but whatever Dante said he was, he handled it with terrifying expertise.

John suddenly felt very small and very susceptible to dying by that sword. Dante saw the color drain out of the other's face and laughed.

"Don't worry. I try my best to avoid sticking humans with Rebellion - unless you make me. Then I have Ebony and Ivory. There's a lot I could say about them, but I'll keep it brief for you. These are my babies. And no, you can't touch them." He sheathed the enormous cleaver in the case at his back and pulled back his jacket back to show off two modified firearms sitting comfortably on his hips in worn but well-oiled leather holsters fastened across his hips and over his shoulders. One gun was gleaming chromed white, and the other was a matte black.

Constantine looked around at his measly office after he had glanced at Dante and his weapons. It had taken him six hours to be driven to Eastunder village proper. He had a six hour drive back there again, only he had to share the space of a vehicle with this strange, uncouth half-blood for company. He started smoking another cigarette, ignoring Dante's questioning look and hoping he wouldn't be like everyone else and not-so-sneakily interrupt, "You really shouldn't smoke those things."

Thankfully Dante was not human enough to be that annoying. With the soothing nicotine coursing across his rattled nerves like a balm, he had could finally think with some form of coherence. He hoped that the fed driving them would let him smoke in the car, even if he had to let the window down and freeze them to death. He hoped that he could bring enough of his trade tools to survive the drug bust.


	2. Chapter 2

Demons walked all around them as they walked out into the street. John Constantine carried a suitcase with a change of clothes and various religious instruments, and a few of them were to ward against any unwanted advances from any one of them. The fact that there were so many, right now, hinted that Dante may have been telling the truth - any demon who went against the First Fallen would have a grudge against any bearing the blood of that demon's lineage, by association. Dante, heedless of the masses, stalked beside him through the snow, his hands into his pockets with the total picture of predatory grace. He must have seen that the people around them were demons or half-breeds. But could he see as much as Constantine?

Most of the creatures among them just wanted to get along in the world as peacefully as possible. John had a full shelf of books of names and identities of beings that would make a rational man wet himself. The ways of demons and angels were not a huge mystery to Constantine. Many of his 'associates' were well-known in supernatural circles. A few of them he might even call his friends, but at the same time, whenever he remembered his place as a mortal human being in God's favorite ant farm, he looked at those relationships with fiery contempt.

Which is how he saw Dante Sparda. Even the supernatural world had laws, but for Dante, these simply did not exist. Constantine still was not clear on the whole half-demon aspect of his life. He had no idea who this fancy demon Sparda was. He never heard of the kind of struggle Dante had briefly skimmed over. He scoured his brain for a clip of text that he might have read, anything that he might have passed off as a myth. But nothing emerged.

Constantine simply passed it off as a lie. Dante was no exception to the rule. He had to be playing someone else's game. Constantine only knew for a fact that even being a half-demon, there was no way he would be getting into Heaven - so why was he fighting against his own kind when there was no light at the end of the tunnel for him?

At least, it seemed to Constantine, there was still hope for himself. At least he was trying to undo the mistake he had made years ago, marking him out as Hellbound upon his death.

He watched the night-time winter scenery slide away into the blur of sleep. Exhaustion crippled his mind for thinking. When he could safely assume Dante was going to leave him alone, he submitted himself to a sleep so deep, he was sure he would not remember the nightmare world awaiting him there.

Hell swirled around him. His old hometown of Los Angeles sprawled before him, consumed by the burning hot fire blown across the landscape by wind that was not cool in the least, but hot. He saw figures in the quivering vagueness of buildings, hovering in doorways and empty glassless windows. Vehicles were in varying degrees of abandoned and disused, rusting or burning away in the constant heat. Constantine walked along the single cleared pathway, the centerline of the road, gripped by an urge to get a closer look at the figures in the windows.

He stopped at the end of the overpass he was walking along, his coat snapping back and forth. He stared at the things in the windows and realized they were... people. He rarely saw anyone in Hell, for they were tucked away in their own private torments reserved just for them. But these people were standing in the open windows and looking out, shadows of themselves, gray phantoms in clothes that no longer looked new or clean.

Constantine, in spite of his hard heart, his spiritual resilience, felt his breathing shorten as he watched one woman take a step forward and tumble, headlong, to the wreckage of Los Angeles traffic below. Then a second figure fell, a mockery of angelic grace, gray bodies crashing to the ground below.

The exorcist watched as each window gave birth to a gray figure and deposited it to the earth. He was only glad that the roaring winds kept him from hearing the dull thumping sounds their bodies made as they made contact with the cracking concrete. His eyes teared up. Probably from the heat.

He sought the ground for a way down, to see the bodies - something prodded him to investigate, as was his nature. The bodies continued to fall, endlessly...

This was not Hell's usual theme.

He clambered down a stack of cars, tumbled down over and over each other, in some ancient cataclysm that had split the overpass in twain. He clambered as carefully as he could, and saw other shapes lurking - yes, these were the faces of Hell, the splitting gaping mouths grinning at him for eternity. They did not dare approach too close for now. In his dreams, they knew they could not touch him. In time they would get their chance to pass him around like a graduation party whore.

He clambered down, slipping on the hood of an SUV. He grabbed hold of a cracking side-view mirror of another car, eyes squinting against the glass that cut into his fingers. "Shit," he whispered, his shoes sliding on the hood as he strained to get purchase. Goddamn winter boots. Then he jerked back, the mirror still gripped in his hand, and he fell backward, rolling and crashing down the cars, until he smacked into the bottom.

The pain of it jarred him awake - but the pain focused, sharpened. He swore again, out loud, smacking the ember burning into his pant leg and into his skin. "Fucking Hell," he groaned, mourning the cost it would be to get them repaired.

Dante picked the cigarette dangling from his lips, waggling the butt before rolling down the window. "Surprised you haven't burned up yet. You fall asleep with cigarettes burning often?"

"No." The dark-haired man glowered, shivering as the cold air poured in through the open window, until Dante closed it finally.

The white-haired half-devil had a peculiar look in his eyes. "You didn't sleep very long. I just saw you nod off for a few seconds."

"Sleep doesn't come easily for people like me, Mister 'Sparda'."

The halfbreed said nothing more, although he kept looking at John Constantine, as if he could see through him, through his pretenses, through the halo of gray smoke that always followed him through the most Hellish of nightmares. He hated the eyes of the half-breed, their ridiculous blueness, the knife made of the most beautiful ice. He looked away and sneered, lighting up another Silk Cut cigarette for the lost one from before. He stared out the window, lost sleep being the least of his problems.

"Listen," Constantine said, "there's things you don't know about me, Mr. Dante Sparda. But I'm going to make one thing clear. You do whatever the hell you do best. Stay out of my way. This was my case before yours and I'm not about to give it up."

"Red-White-and-Blue said you don't actually believe there's any real supernatural danger here, hotshot. You better start acting your part, or the job goes to me anyway." White hair fell across those infuriating eyes, too beautiful to be on a face that belonged to a half-devil. Why did they all have to be conceited sons of bitches?

"Then we'll just have to see who actually solves this first." John blew a curl of smoke at the halfbreed, then turned to glare out the window, seeking the comfort of sleep somehow.

* * *

The ride went on without any further conversation, although it may have been because Dante had reclined in his leathery seat and slept. John envied the bastard. Then again, a halfbreed of the supposedly legendary lineage he boasted about might not have any reason to lose sleep.

When they arrived, they pulled in at a small hotel with an entire floor rented to a team of government agents. When the pair of paranormal investigators took the elevator up, Constantine was visibly fidgeting because, sadly, it was a non-smoking floor and he could hardly wait to get another smoke in before they started talking. No sleep, no caffeine, and no nicotine - that put him in a wonderful mood for investigation.

Dante seemed rested, though no more eager than John to get started.

A pair of agents met them at the door. A tough nut with graying hair straightened back from his face and tied back back a weathered, rigid serious face that had not seen a smile for many moons.

"John Constantine. Dante. Glad you could make it." He did not appear sorry about the lateness of the hour at all. He was nursing a cup of steaming black coffee, as was most of the group standing around in the room beyond. It was a meeting room for conventions, but since it was such a small town, it was dusty and the white paint yellowed on the painted over pipes.

Paperwork and machinery was everywhere, taking up any available space on the long fold-out tables. Dante whistled appreciatively.

"Have you gotten a decent lead on where the suspect went?" The white-haired devil hunter pulled a chair out and sat on it backwards, his fingers plucking at his gloves to take them off. "I'm not surprised. So, what, we wait for sunrise while the snow is still falling so we can lose the trail?"

The new man, his severe look focused on Dante, simply tightened his hold on his cup of coffee. "My name is Jason Dowerty. You've already met my second in command here, Vascoe. We're the front line in supernatural activity that threatens the United States in terms of supernatural organized crime."

Dante arched an eyebrow, his glittering gaze taking in the scenery before them. It was a nice little group of hopeful warriors. At least it was more than a group of haphazard teenagers clutching books about the supernatural purchased from Borders.

Dowerty looked like someone he could come to respect, if only he did not look so... sour. Dante sighed, raking a hand through his hair. "So how do you intend in tracking your missing suspect, Captain America?"

Vascoe looked up, standing in front of a monitor, practically glowing with distaste for the white-haired devil hunter. "You address Dowerty with respect, if you please!"

"So you're not the FBI?" Constantine said. "So you're come skeleton crew for supernatural threats and you lied to me. But you can't do your job."

"It's not unheard of for our group to enlist the help of a third party working on the behalf of mankind to assist us. If you want to give us a name, you can call us Angels. We're a... small delegation of agents who work with Homeland Security with a focus on the occult and supernatural forces at work in our country."

"Why did you call me?" Dante asked coldly. He looked around at the group, then specifically at Dowerty and the silvery badge in the shape of open, embracing wings circled by a halo pinned to his lapel. "Exactly what do you think I'm going to accomplish for you? I've been nice enough until now to indulge you, since I only work for very specific job classifications. But if I'm going to be working on your highly esteemed payroll, I wanna know just what your game is, who exactly you think is playing, and why I should care... or I'm walking."

The group called Angels - laughable though it was - made no noise at all. Constantine looked out of the corner of his eye, wondering if this guy Dante was more ballsy than he thought. Then again...

"We don't know that much yet. But we know there was a man who arrived to Eastunder Church and quickly earned the trust of the other elders there. The church community here is pretty strong, but it's been shaken up - understandably - since this occurence. The man disappeared, the only one not to have been poisoned. Everyone at the church is dead. Elders, the pastor, everyone who attended regularly."

Dante looked pensive; then he stood up. "I want to see the church." He looked at John, winked conspiratorially. "Comb over whatever you and Mr. Constantine here might have missed. You understand. Goodnight, fellas."

He walked off, took the key to the room that was offered, and disappeared into the room. Constantine followed him with his own key acquired from one of the Angels and grumbled when he realized as soon as he neared the door that he could feel Dante inside - his essence was sprayed all over the doorknob, which left an ugly image in his mind.

He saw Dante crashed on the twin-sized bed opposite the empty one. He was on his back, his hands tucked behind his head, snoring at a reasonable volume. He looked so plain ordinary, but he could see underneath the shell of mortal skin that there was something underneath him. He closed the door and stared at the half-devil in the dim half-light, battling exhaustion and hatred. Who are you, Dante Sparda?

It was a mystery he would have to solve sometime soon... along with uncovering the source of Shadow Dust - who was behind it, who distributed it, and how to actually stop it.

* * *

The dream came again more strongly this time. Hell unrolled itself around him like an ancient map. Familiar buildings sprang up in disarray, abandoned and corrupted by the passage of time. It was cold here. Snow - no, ash - fell all around him in the middle of the street. Cutting through the gray sky was the blackest silhouette - the church.

Constantine willed himself to move forward, but he could not move an inch. _Well, this is different_. His eyes could only watch as he glared through the veil of falling ashes, the illusion of daylight shivering through a curtain of gray clouds. He watched the church as merely an observer of the dream. The building sat quietly, burdened by the layer of bone-white ashes collecting on the roof and the eaves. There was not a single sound. The absence of wind, demons, people, marked this not as a dream of Hell but a vision - he was being privy to an event that might happen... or happened already.

_It's not the first time I've been privy to seeing shit like this. But never when I was asleep - usually when I walk into a place, it will hit me - fill me with the vision of the event that happened..._

_Or fill me with the emotions of someone dying there. I lose myself in the thoughts of the murderer, brush up against insanity, entrapped by some demon's mind snares..._

His eyes widened as he heard a noise, dull and indistinct, but grew louder - resolving itself into the sound of more than a dozen voices screaming together, a riot of pain and anguish and madness - it filled the air and rang inside Constantine's head, giving him a pounding aching between his ears. He glared through the falling ashes, frozen in the street.

Then the front doors swung open, and a scrawny man stepped out. His silhouette became clearer - he wore the garb of a church elder, his hair was disheveled, his face too narrow, too haunted. His eyes, strangely enough, seemed no more than empty hollow spaces of shadow. He bustled out into the ashy night, hugging a thin coat around his rake-thin body.

Constantine kept his eyes on him the entire time, since he was rather short on what else to do. He watched the silhouette of the thin man walking, and the scenery rippled, particulating into another area - he crept down underneath the bridge, ducking beneath trees smothered in ashes, and slid beyond sight. The screaming had stopped. But it rang in his mind, even long after he opened his eyes and stared at the dull daylight straining through the clouds outside the hotel.

He left the hotel room, swearing to himself that he had better not have drawn any attention to himself from the halfbreed. Of course, if the halfie wanted to follow, he would and there was nothing Constantine could do to dissuade him except hope that a certain holy incantation would keep him at bay.

_This is my job_, he thought. _And no goddamn halfie son of a bitch is going to take this from me._

He passed the various other rooms that probably housed the other dozen or so "Angels" that Dowerty and Vascoe were in charge of leading. He hoped they slept in a couple more hours before they noticed he was gone, or they were seriously going to cramp his investigation style. Even if Dowerty and Vascoe alone decided to tail him, it was better by degrees than having Dante Sparda riding his ass all the way to the crime scene.

He breathed in the bitingly frigid air and started coughing as soon as he got outside. To coat his already ravaged lungs, he pulled a Silk Cut from the pack in his breast pocket and locked the image of the scrawny man in his mind's eye. If he kept that in place, he would be able to focus on where the bastard was heading - maybe even pick up a psychic trail. Someone who dealt with demons and angels might leave an interesting cookie crumb path to follow.

The snow wasn't falling as harshly now. The only setback now was it had been falling hard all night until now. The weak daylight trickled through the thickly packed winter overcast. He walked down the street, glancing at the window he assumed to be was his room. If Dante had woken up, would he be following him by now?

Either way, he was going to do this job quickly. Uninterrupted was preferable. He stalked his way to the church yard, where sound itself seemed to be sucked into another world entirely - it's as quiet as if death himself had come here. He laughed at the cynical, black humor, even though he was the only one present to be amused. If death had walked here, he would have stuck around just to check up on Constantine's unique form of progress.

He looked up into the sky, reminded of the ashes from his dream. He wondered why ashes would fall. He remembered hearing something about the horrors of World War II. During the Holocaust, when the Nazi's brought the Jewish people to places like Auschwitz, they burned them in massive crematoriums. Their ashes rose to the sky and fell on those waiting for their turn to be burned. It fell like snow.

He walked up to the church's doors, still barred by yellow tape. He casually opened them and stepped inside, half of himself reluctant to enter this sanctum of the dead, the other half eager to just get it done and over with.

The entryway was long gone. The bodies had been cleaned up, but the stale dour atmosphere of remorse and death hung heavily, like cobwebs from every surface. As he walked through the pews toward the wooden cross hung with purple fabric, he stared around himself, searching. He took off his gloves, smoke trailing behind him, rising toward the dusty rafters.

Then, turning to face the pews, he tried to open his mind... as much as he dared. He was not as naturally gifted a psychic as some other people he knew in his business. But he would know if he opened his mind here, if the man who preached was being influenced by demons... and who, in fact, was controlling him from the background.

He memorized the pews, the light shining in through the stained glass windows, the modest coffee machine set-up in the back for those who weren't quite alert for God's good news Sunday mornings. He reached his hands out, his fingertips tingling - feeling for a memory, a moment captured in time, stuck so hard in space from the sheer volume of its intensity that it would echo back at anyone who gave it just the right resonance.

He felt it - a soft cobweb that clung to his fingertips, sticking to his mind. He found a taut thread, barely testing its strength in case he found himself ensnared. He gave it the gentlest of touches - plucked it with the softness of a lover's caress. The entire church hummed with energy, and he dropped his hands, letting the echo wash over him - the world swept away in a metaphysical wave. Forced to his knees, Constantine watched as verdant figures in green cloaks swept through the room, toward pale, gray-faced figures seated in the pews. They gathered themselves in a line. Constantine found himself being pulled to his feet by invisible threads - jerking him by his arms and his shoulders and his head, like a marionette on a string.

He said, "We are gathered here today... to test the will of our Lord, to show him that we truly Believe! Our Faith is strong, our bodies are resilient... Let us partake of this new communion..." The arms that did not belong to Constantine for the moment acted out the gestures, the passionate voice that exploded from his throat spoke with deepest, darkest conviction. Then he turned toward the empty table, but ghostly outlines replaced where there had been the punch bowl, the ladel, the plastic cups - and a velvet-lined basket filled with those packets.

Shadow Dust, thought John Constantine. He stared, trying to memorize each and every movement, trying to stamp the memory of the man's voice in his head as the stranger's voice spoke through him.

"Tonight... We will devote our bodies to the true lord! He will acknowledge our sacrifice and give us life eternal! Drink deeply and think only of our sacred lord!"

Constantine clung with nail-breaking force on his concept of reality, while this went on. If he lost it... even just a little... it would take a long time to collect his reason and continue on with this investigation and he would rather that not happen.

But before he could let the wave of crashing ephemeral memory fulfill its course, he felt a massive disturbance snap the thread of it - the resonance became sour, discorded, raucous. The gray figures came up and emptied the Shadow Dust into their cups and drank deeply, their eyes closed - their eyes were closed - something was strange about those eyes before they closed -

He spun around, gasping as Dante stepped through the church doors, a crimson silhouetted monster casually looking left and right as he entered the church. He looked right at Constantine, who was once again on the floor, coughing.

"You all right, smoky?" the red-cloaked figure asked, a smattering of genuine concern etched into his cocky baritone.

Constantine didn't hear it. His body shook with awful, racking coughs - his hand came away with blood speckling his palm, leaking into the depressingly short life line. He plucked a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped off his hand, ignoring Dante completely.

"I'd appreciate it if you knock next time." His voice sounded unfamiliar and rusty - though it might have been because he was reliving that man's memory.

But while the sensation was still fresh, even though every breath he took was agony, he walked past Dante - but before he got far, he felt an iron-hard hand grab his upper arm and pull him around while he passed.

"You're dying," he said in all seriousness. "You sure you want to do this job?"

"I have to," Constantine said. "Now fucking let me go. While I can still feel him."

Dante looked again a complicated mixture of confusion and annoyance. He let go, watching Constantine stumble outside and follow a blind, meandering path through the church yard and along the sidewalk. Dante shoved his hands into his pockets, took a few steps after the dwindling figure who still coughed into his sleeve as he followed the psychic thread leading him for the bastard who did this.

He paused and looked behind him. The church was looking back him with baleful windows, unlit from within. A doorway left open too long let in unwanted guests. Dante felt the tickle of cold and hot drift across the back of his neck.

Constantine was far enough away from danger. He smirked, pulling his hands from his pockets and sliding open the sword case for when he needed Rebellion the most.

The marked man John Constantine had been so close to dying right then and there, he had no idea. The demon materalized from the stagnant aura of death hovering within the church. It seemed not even this place had any protection from the dark realm anymore. Either way, Dante watched the ruined figure in a cloak approach. Hooded and cloaked, it hunkered forward, chains dragging along the ground, but its lurid gaze glittered from within the chasm of darkness in that hood.

"Hoo. Pretty scary." He lifted his hands in supplication. "Are you gonna take my soul too? Sorry. I'm more or less spoken for in that department. But you're gonna have to leave my sick little buddy alone."


	3. Chapter 3

Constantine kept moving, though the cold was making him numb from the waist down. His eyes were focused only on a vague hallucination - it was real to him, and only those who could see it as well. It pulled him along. He had to follow it. It was his job.

"This is my job," he whispered. His teeth were chattering. His fingers had lost feeling a long time ago. He knew somewhere, in the back of his mind, he wasn't feeling right. This wasn't normal. But he followed the thread anyway, reaching out to grab it - only to have it slip from his fingers. He was alone. Dante wasn't following him anymore. Good.

He saw the bridge. It had taken him about fifteen minutes to walk through here. He remembered their eyes - the way they looked. Something was wrong, but he couldn't remember what. It wriggled like a maggot in the back of his mind while he mindlessly pursued the suspect's psychic pathway. The black, smoky thread was getting dimmer anyway, so he had no time to think about what else he saw just yet. He fumbled in his jacket pockets for a gun in case his human quarry wanted to get nasty. In the other hand he held his suitcase, which was feeling heavier and heavier all the time in this damn cold.

He crept beneath the bridge, though the heavy snow made it impossible. He crawled over a snowbank, growling at the branches snagging at his jacket. He let his suitcase slip down the slope toward the icy later across the bridge itself. He was relieved that at this time of year, such a little brook was well-iced over. The slope, icy and treacherous, was knotted with tree roots that were hidden beneath layers of thin, freshly fallen powdery snow.

He slipped down, swore aloud as he twisted a bit unnaturally on his ankle on the way down. But no matter how much it hurt, he'd think about it later. At least the cold would numb the pain until he found out where the bastard was hiding.

He followed the hazy thread through the snow, walking along the side of the brook, carrying his suitcase. He had no idea how far out this trail could go. Then when the path meandered across a wider part of the brook, he stopped and stared at the crossing he had to overcome. In order to ford this damn river, he risked busting through the ice and getting soaking wet - and far from someplace warm in case he ended up with a sinister case of hypothermia.

Not that it mattered either way. Every breath he took was like icy torture. It set his lungs on fire; he coughed harder, glaring through the snowy trees. He felt the cold more and more - and the pain of his ankle less and less. This was going to endangering his life already and he wasn't even close to finding the suspect.

-----

The hooded shackled Demon stood before Dante in the churchyard. Snow began to fall again, slowly, but it was not snow at all - it clung to Dante's fingertips, rubbed off greasily and left a grimy, gray residue. Ash.

Dante's guns slid from their leather holsters without a noise, and he spun first one, then the other. "Listen, buddy. The exit's that way." He pointed down, his eyes gleaming unnaturally in the half-light of the winter morning.

The Demon stopped advancing, shook itself all over. It seemed to twist itself in painful positions, its arms cracking this way and that, a voice powered by lungs that sounded like they were made of ancient rice paper - on fire speaking in a language Dante only vaguely understood.

"I was promised," the Demon whispered. "I was promised!"

"Promised what?" He walked to the left, slow and methodical, a battle itching on the verge, while the Demon moved toward the right.

"I was promised... eternal life." The Demon threw back its hooded head, screaming, "I was promised eternal life by that bastard!"

Dante stopped all movement, his eyes narrowing slowly in perplexed bemusement. Promised eternal life... then this thing wasn't necessarily immortal, was it?

"Who are you?"

"What does it matter, wretched son of Sparda? Hell awaits the mortals who participated in this church, but my work was for nothing! But now that you are here... Perhaps I can win my prize back, prove to the Fallen One that I am worthy!"

A hairsbreadth of time spurred Dante to dodge, diving out of the path as a long, jagged spear burrowed itself into the snow just past his shoulder. His trigger finger attitude served him well - as soon as he rolled to a crouch, both guns were roaring - flashes of light and the noise of gunfire filled the unholy churchground. The demon howled, and vanished in a swirl of black - it stank of sulfur. The spear vanished, then three more re-appeared quivering above Dante before diving toward his inert body crouched on the snow. He leapt again, barely escaping the tip of the one closest to him as it nailed a corner of his jacket to the ground. He had no enemy to fire at... and since no more spears appeared, he waited, hopping back toward the middle of the churchyard.

The yard decorations were simple - a cross here and there, some leaf-bare trees, bushes. He looked around, his nerve-endings crackling, each and every hair on his head tingling. Despite the temperature, he was hot - sweat trickled between his shoulderblades. This wasn't getting him anywhere closer to following Constantine and making sure the damn bastard didn't get himself dead.

How could he resist a good throw-down like this? Constantine looked capable enough to take care of himself in a tight spot. He had seen his hardware, seen what he was bringing with him in that suitcase of his, and admitted the guy had some decent tricks up his sleeve. He could handle whatever was out there, human or not. Except for this thing. This demon was different than most other things he had faced before. He flicked his eyes here and there, quivering with energy left unspent, waiting for when the next attack would come. He had bullets, and each and every one was hungry to explode through the flesh of a demon who was just begging for some punishment.

The ash was still falling, sticking in his hair. He felt a disturbance in the force, so to speak, as clouds above thickened. He felt the air stir suddenly behind him and he whirled around. Then through his back, something cold, hard, sharp, and fast, pushed.

"Fuck."

The spear struck right through him - in one end, out the other. It happened to be straight through his middle. He tried to swear again, but only succeeded in filling his mouth with the coppery tang of his own blood. He dove to the side again, then rushed forward, returning his guns to his holsters in favor of a more solid approach. Rebellion made a hard 'whuff' as it passed through thin air where the Demon had been just before he swung. It appeared again - whirling lance blades creating a hurricane of pain. Dante rushed in faster this time, the notched tip of Rebellion slamming into the Demon's chest again and again, like a rabid sewing machine. He wrenched it lose, hearing a satisfying wet "pop" as something important came out with the notched tip of the sword - a chunk of rancid flesh and a spurting of black, oozing blood.

The Demon spiralled away, the array of spears it had raised around itself quivering like porcupine quills. "I was promised... I was... promised..."

"Too easy," Dante muttered, but it was more a troubling observation than a boast. He watched the demon disappear slowly again, and held his breath, counting his heartbeats. When it did not come back, he let it go and whipped the gore off Rebellion with a frivilous air before sheathing it across his back.

In the distance, he heard a sound - like the crack of a small pistol.

------

He came out of nowhere, struck Constantine from behind. The body that collided into him felt like it might match the bony, thin silhouette of the man he saw before. But before he could confirm it, they had both lost their balance. Constantine barely had time to throw his arms out and drop the suitcase before he struck the ice on the brook. He heard the other man's wheezing grunt just before he felt a sharp stab in his left bicep - through his jacket, shirt, and everything. It was a tiny little pinprick of a pain, but he was still at this fucker's mercy and it would get worse. A lot worse. He bucked violently, roaring, managing to throw the lighter man off him long enough to dig for his gun.

He shouted, "Freeze, you son of a bitch!" He rolled on his back and turned the handgun on the figure - he took in his face in that heart-stopping moment. The gauntness, the haunted nature of him, the hollowness of his eyes which seemed to have such a soulless, empty quality.

The hollow thin man was crouched in the snow near the brook. Constantine was still laying on his back, his legs spread, aiming the gun between his legs at him. He stood up. Constantine swore.

"I said stop!" Constantine felt hot tears brim from the corners of his eyes, using every ounce of his willpower to keep down the urge to start another coughing fit. It was working.

But the shell of a man hunkered forward, then lunged again, pouncing on the excorcist. The ice groaned. John fired once - but the gun was between his legs, and now it was stuck there, dangerously close to blowing off something he was going to regret. The hollow man punched, elbowed, bit at his face. John dropped the gun, feeling teeth scrape his cheek as he writhed under the other man. The ice moaned.

Suddenly the hollow man crushed down against him. John's breath exploded out of his chest, triggering his fit - and even while his eyes were watering and he blindly fought to find his knife - a last resort - he felt the hollow man grope between John's legs. The gun. He brought up with one hand and tried to aim straight, but John's coughing actually saved him this time - that, and he was struggling and wriggling and trying to fuck up his aim as much as he could.

Shots were fired everywhere, bullets zipping past his arms, his head - anywhere but actually connecting. He screamed anyway, feeling the ice beneath him sink. He hear it crackle all around him.

Icy wet cold fear dripped down the back of his shirt. He screamed, finally yanking the six-inch butterfly knife out of its place in his belt and slamming it down and forward as hard as he could into the stringy meat of the man's shoulder. John's attacker finally screamed but it did not sound like any noise that ought to come from a person's throat.

"Get the fuck off me, you ugly son of a bitch." He kicked at the man while he was stunned with pain, the knife sticking clear up out of his shoulder. A vermillion flower bloomed against his white priest's collar as he rolled around on the ice. John got on his hands and knees and grabbed at the gun with numb fingers - just as the ice gave way underneath him and he went under - only about up to his chest. But it was enough. He had sank into frigid gray water.

He was entirely soaked. The temperature was so intense, so sudden, so brutal, it made every inch of him cramp and seize up like a giant Charlie horse. He kept coughing, spitting blood, shuddering.

_God, this is fucking cold._

He looked up, gazing at the spotty silhouette of the priest. Something was wrong about his eyes, now that he could see him - something he again could not grasp, being so cold and in so much pain. He felt a peculiar distant throbbing in his arm, persistant and nagging.

His gun was still uselessly trapped underwater in the deathgrip his hand had formed around it when he picked it up again. The hollow man stood up shakily in the calf-deep water, reaching up and pulling at the butterfly knife. It came out of his shoulder easily. Blood still carved a black path through his clothing.

The hollow man opened his mouth and spoke. The language made John's stomach turn. Hellspeak.

John sat up, shakily lifting the gun. Even if his frozen fingers could pull the trigger, the gun had gotten wet and the firing mechanism was fucked. "Stay away from me. Tell me what the hell is Shadow Dust!"

"You've interfered, Hellbound. Now you die." The hollow man, who had masqueraded as a priest, lifted the knife John had used against him.

John clenched his teeth and staggered to his feet, prepared to do what he must to defend his life - even if it meant killing an innocent man possessed. "Not... yet," he wheezed. "Not yet, I won't."

Garnering every bit of feeling he could back into his hand, he pulled the trigger. But the shot that rang out came from somewhere behind the hollow man. He sported a fresh black flower through his winter coat beside his shoulder. He fell to the side, wailing.

Dante stepped through the trees, lowering the black Ebony he sported in one of his holsters. He saw Constantine, looking like a drowned rat, nearly bent double as he coughed into the river that was rushing all around his ankles. A few more figures appeared behind Dante - the "Angels" had come to Constantine's rescue.

"Get him before he bleeds to death," Dante called to them, gesturing to the false priest moaning and rolling on the ground. Then he slid down the bank and grabbed Constantine's free arm, pulling him onto the bank. Then he retrieved his suitcase, walking on ice that wasn't broken through. "You seriously did a number on him."

"He's a murderer," John wheezed. "But he won't die. Can't kill him. Sin."

Dante carried him up the slope, and gave him a shoulder as they walked back along. Constantine was a non-stop hypothermia case. Luckily there was the road as soon as they got to the bridge and the road and thankfully, a van that the angels had ridden in. John could see his breath - whenever he _could_ breathe - so Dante pushed him into the van and climbed in, plucked the useless firearm out of his white fingers, and started to pull off his wet clothes.

John grimaced. But he didn't protest when Dante undressed him. Even though the van was still chill, barely driven half a mile to get to the bridge, it was degrees warmer than it was outside. The halfie glanced over his arms, lifting an eyebrow at the tattooes - and then sobering a bit more, seeing John's scars - the very obvious signs of a cutter. Not just any cutter, but someone with a very real intent on self-termination by gouging their blood out with a kitchen knife.

"Keep your boxers on," the halfie instructed. "Only things that didn't get wet. Christ." He took off his leather coat and dropped it on top of John, just as the Angels were pulling the bleeding false priest from the woods. He reached over the front seat, turned the key in the ignition and turned the heat on full blast.

"Next time, don't go on ahead without me. This - isn't exactly what I meant to happen when I said stay out of my way."

"Shut up. G-Getting so cold my balls almost drop off w-wasn't exactly high on my p-priority list, all right?"

The Angels were closing in, dropping the man on the ground and administering some more medical attention to his wounds. John was closing his eyes, convulsing with chills under Dante's red leather jacket. It was warming up more and more. Dante threw the wet clothes into the front passenger seat - tough luck to whoever had to deal with it.

"Why'd he call you Hellbound, Constantine?" the half-breed muttered, staring out the window, watching the Angels at their work - mostly to give the human a bit of privacy.

"No reason." John took a deep breath, a pained one, and it ended in coughing. He stared at the wet pile of clothes in the front seat. "Cigarette."

"No."

"Fuck you!" He shrank back into the seat. He slid under the jacket, his black hair falling across his eyes. "I got him, though. Or at least, the other way around."

"Yeah." Dante Sparda allowed the tiniest of smirks to slide into place. "Yeah, you got him. Now let's see what he can tell us."

The priest was put in a separate vehicle. He looked to be unconscious at last, from blood loss or from coming down from his high or whatever it was. John felt himself slipping in and out of wakefulness, his arm still throbbing from where he must have fallen on the ice. His vision blurred in and out. Suddenly Dante's voice was right at his ear.

"Talk to me, John. Tell me what happened."

_I want to sleep_, Jonh thought stubbornly, but something nagged at him anyway. "Followed the trail. Followed him. So full of hate. Bastard killed them, smiled and watched them all die. Somehow he... got them all so messed up and then they drank it and they died." He swallowed, trying to detangle the memories from the nightmare. "Something wasn't right. Something's not right about their eyes - not the same - not the... same..."

A warm, steady hand touched his forehead. It startled him awake again. He stared at Dante, leaning across him, head tilted so he didn't bang his head on the roof of the van. "John, are you still with me?"

The van was moving.

"John, stay awake. Don't go to sleep. John!"

Carried out into the morning. Cold again. Then warm, confused looks, voices talking, talking. He saw the bell boy take his wet clothes to the laundry room just an instant before he saw his pale wings rise from his shoulders, giving him a second glance so mournful and beautiful it damn near broke his heart in two.

Then Dante carrying him upstairs, his white hair glowing in the light of the bedroom lantern, a halo rising from it, smudged and blurred. John wanted to shut his eyes, but Dante hovered always just in his peripheral vision, forcing him to focus, stay alert. He was frozen cold, had no idea how long he had been soaking in that cold water. Those ethereal blue eyes razed over him again and again. Stung him to the core with their concern. _A halfie - a half-demon, no less - playing nursemaid to a poor fucker like me._

_Die by the cold just to burn in Hell. Piss off, irony._

He closed his eyes at last.

-------

John wasn't dead.

In fact, he was quite alive. He was warm all over. His body was whole. He even smelled coffee brewing. It was another morning, like yesterday, except he knew it wasn't just deja vu. He forced his head to turn to look the bed opposite, and saw no Dante Sparda sleeping.

"Sleeping Beauty! You're awake."

John moistened his chapped lips, finding Dante at his bedside, reclined in a chair with his feet up on an ottoman. "Cigarette."

"No."

"Piss off. I want my fucking cigarettes and I want 'em now."

"They got wet with rest of your shit. If you want what's left of the tragic remains, feel free to dig through the garbage in the laundry room where they dried your clothes."

Shit! Not my nicotine not my nicotine shit shit it's been a day and I've had no cigarettes--

Constantine sat up. He nearly swooned back into unconsciousness, but he shook it off. Stubbornly ignoring the fact that he was still dressed in his briefs when he regained his feet, he walked to the pile of clothes folded on the chair next to the little desk. He ignored the stare Dante gave - directed at his arms.

"Take a picture." John snapped at the half-devil. He opened his suitcase, also on the little wooden desk. A fresh pair of pants, a shirt, underwear, socks. He would have wanted a shower first, but he had ulterior motives for looking in his suitcase. Right beside the holy dagger and the folded shroud that had been wrapped around Jesus, he found his prize - a second pack of smokes. He fumbled around for another lighter, and glared at Dante as he finally fulfilled his addiction. In twenty-four hours, he hadn't smoked a single cigarette and his energy was high in spite of no food.

Cigarette first. Then food. Then shower.

Dante just watched, hands folded behind his head, a half-formed smirk on his lips. "You really are something else." He met his annoyed look with his own. "You freeze your ass off. You're dying of lung cancer. You walk out into the middle of nowhere with hokey relics, a gun, and a knife. You nearly get shot, nearly drown, nearly die of hypothermia - and you want a cigarette."

"All in a day's work."

Dante, tactless as ever, threw back his head and laughed heartfully - it sounded jovial at best, mocking at worst. "For a human, you're pretty fucked up."

"Look who's talking," the human replied, sneering at Dante as he flicked the ashes right on the desk. Screw the Non-Smoking rule. "Just tell me what I missed and I promise, I won't be that reckless again."

"The man's an addict of Shadow Dust. All he says is, he's the Stranger sent to this town by his master. Obviously his soul-bound not to say who his master actually is. The Angels are working on getting finger-print matches and facial comparisons from the FBI's data base right now. That's all that's happened so far."

"Is he here?"

"No. They got a full armored escort and carted him to a maximum security holding facility for observation. So says the Angels."

John stuck the Silk Cut cigarette between his lips and started to pull on a clean pair of pants, still feeling the eyes that haunted him through his hypothermic delirium fixed on his body Now it was just getting creepy, being watched. If this one fancied males, it was going to get uncomfortable. He buttoned up a shirt and felt himself quaking with hunger. "Food."

"Right over there."

The human quickly walked over, stuck the cigarette in an empty cup and started to munch on the fare laid out for him. As gulps of still-hot pancakes slid down his throat, he felt his stomach gurgle in response - a happy gurgle. Hot coffee, too, immediately warmed him and zapped with a quick enough jolt to get him alert and enthusiastic - at least a little of the latter - to get through the rest of the morning. The bacon was a mixture of crispy-tender and that, too, flew down his gullet.

Food service here was amazing. He had to remember to leave a tip. A generous one.

Dante walked over to table, bored watching someone else eat. His own breakfast had come much earlier when he ran out quickly to a twenty-four hour mini-mart to grab something to munch on. When he wasn't watching John Constantine, he was eating or cleaning his weapon. The gun, soaking wet, was cleaned and dry now. Dante had busied himself overnight and the next day, had spent his time observing the Angels at their work when he could. But something about Constantine kept him at the human's side.

A question that remained unanswered.

"Why did he call you Hellbound, Constantine?"

The human, frail, sick, but with such an indomitable spirit Dante was stunned by it, hunched his shoulders, turning back toward him. Dante wondered if the past day was the only time he would ever see the man without a cigarette dangling from his lips. He wanted to snatch it out of his mouth, the goddamn fool.

"I'm going to Hell. I.E., I'm bound for Hell. Hellbound." He rolled up a sleeve, his voice deadpan, gravelly. "I was dead for two minutes.. and because I killed myself, I'm damned. Forever."

Dante looked harder at Constantine, trying to detect a lie - and ashamed he did. There was nothing. Constantine glared through his thick shaggy unwashed hair, his dark eyes alight from within with a stubborn restlessness that rebelled against the words that had come out of his mouth.

"Sorry I asked," Dante muttered, putting the handgun on the table back together, avoiding that look for the time being.

Constantine cackled dryly. It sounded like a cough, but he was still smiling. "Was it the happy story? Were there enough rainbows and butterflies and blue birds singing 'It's A Small World' and shitting all over your grave?" The man didn't sound it but he was hysteric. He flicked ashes on the empty plate of food, a terrific way to end his meal. Another cigarette replaced the last one. He stamped out another few minutes of his life - knowing full well it had to end sometime.

"When you said you were living on borrowed time, did you mean you're gonna die at a specific time?"

"I've got my own biological clock. Says I've got some time to go."

Dante eyed the pack of cigarettes, considered their value, considered their meaning to Constantine. "I get it. Why you're so reckless. Doesn't matter." He let that sink in for awhile, then chuckled. "So - what, if I hadn't rescued you, someone else would have?"

"The Angels." Constantine huffed at the name. "They were right behind you when you heard the gunshots, weren't they?"

"Yeah." Providence sure had a funny way of showing up late to the ball. Still, Dante didn't regret being there. The Angels would have saved Constantine from hypothermia, but not from being stabbed multiple times and suffering even further scarification.

And having seen John's body firsthand, he would have preferred him without new scars. Dante folded his arms, watching John finish dressing, trying to ignore the feeling of respect growing for this puny mortal. He understood it now - or thought he did - why Constantine felt so different from other humans. He was still just a man, but a marked one. The stink of sulfur was no coincidence. He brushed elbows with the Demon World all the time. He was no paranormal college flunkie.

_What a haunted, brave, tragic guy. Kudos, Mr. Constantine. You've got my vote. _"If you want to see the guy, it's not a long drive from here. It actually stopped snowing, too. I'll tell you what I encountered at the church just after you left and you can tell me what you Saw."

Constantine pulled on a pair of shoes. Sadly, they were still quite damp in spite of sitting by the base board heater all night. Finishing tying his shoes, he looked up. A snide remark about how this was still HIS job floated around on his tongue. Dante could see his resistence to teamwork right there, but it faded, sinking into the backseat for now. "Sure."

The pair walked out of the hotel room together and prepared their meeting with Vascoe and Dowerty and their team of paranormal investigators.

After relaying the information for the team to understand, John had expected disbelief or at least chagrin at his bizarre encounter and his findings. To his surprise, no one doubted him - least of all Dante, who nodded in agreement. Then Dante spoke about his battle - briskly leaving out the detail about how he got impaled through the chest with a spear and miraculously avoided dying.

"We've found out a lot from his identification match. He's a singular fellow, this one. His claims to priesthood are false."

"Duh." Dante grinned in supplication at the interruption.

Dowerty deadpanned, "He's the go-to distributor for Shadow Dust. It's been strictly street drug until now, and we're seeing no patterns so far. Most cities see it in small amounts, because it's so rare. What happened here was a test - to see whether a group of people could be influenced by the drug in small, incrementally increased amounts enough to actually overdose."

Vascoe explained, "We even examined the coffee pot and found trace amounts of it in the filters thrown away in the garbage disposal behind the church. It's not easy to identify, but we test it again Constantine's formula - and get the same response with a solution, no matter how big or small."

"Who passed out?" Constantine asked brightly, looking eagerly through the group for a volunteer.

Slowly, someone in the back raised their hand.

"Write down everything you've experienced since you did. Keep a journal. Whatever. Talk to me if something freaky happens to you."

The person in the back nodded briskly, looking anxious.

"So the Stranger got them addicted to SD and then they all ODed at the same time."

"There was enough SD in those packets to kill a rhino," said a woman with short, cropped hair. "I'm not even sure why they used so much... but it did the job."

"So what has it proved?"

"So far, we know that SD addicts speak Hellspeak. This is not coincidence. I can safely conclude that there is certainly something supernatural about what's going on." Constantine was loathe to admit it, but it was certainly demonic involvement in this case. It was certainly bizarre - using a drug to open gateways through people - but it was definitely serious. The Stranger failed to explain how killing a bunch of people addicted to SD helped meet an ends to aid the Demon World.

The only way to find out was to return to Hell. Complete the Nightmare. Dante watched Constantine as he withdrew from the conversation, letting everyone else make the conclusions he had already made yesterday - when the Stranger had pummeled him to near to death on the ice. He focused on the way his lips tightened, his eyebrows drew together, and his face became a shadow altogether when he bowed his head, those lips now moving in silent but furtive speech.

Then Constantine heard his name and his head snapped up. "Yeah?"

"We're taking this to Los Angeles; sources indicate a huge demand for SD there. We know you're from downtown LA, and I was hoping you would come with us. Dante, you also."

"Fine," Dante said. "I'm game. Aside from being boring, I get to spend my vacation in LA with you fine wonderful people." He stood up and stalked out of the room, a livid expression in his ice blue eyes.

Constantine shook his head. "Wonder what's eating him."


	4. Chapter 4

(**Disclaimer:** Serious, heavy drug use is referenced in this fanfic. Reader discretion is advised. Young readers are discouraged from reading this. I do not condone the use or distribution of drugs, nor do I encourage anyone to get involved. I actually had to do a bit of research to make sure I was using the proper 'slang' to make the fic more believable. So before you guys cry 'GUTTER JUNKIE' on me, keep in mind I had to look up a few websites about it before I felt comfortable writing this chapter and others that may follow.

Winter in this part of the west coast was a hell of a lot different than it was in New York. It wasn't especially warm then they landed very early the following week, as early in the morning as could be managed. Sleeping on the plane had been a challenge for Dante, who wanted to stay up to look at everything until staring at the clouds got boring. He wanted to ask Constantine a lot about Los Angelos - Dante had always been fascinated by a place named for something after angels. The most foreign adventure he had was to another dimension; ironically he found it more fascinating to travel to someplace else on the planet Earth.

For one thing, it was raining and the air had a chill as soon as they stepped outside and hailed a cab in the feeble light of dawn with rain falling consistently for five minutes. Neither Dante nor Constantine had brought any. Dante and Constantine would have to travel alone to an efficiency flat they had made a reservation for, with all the appropriate equipment the exorcist had requested be brought from his own apartment in New York. It would be arriving tomorrow morning. For now, he had his cross gun, a pistol, the Shroud, and a few handy trinkets of his own.

The rain slackened by the time they took the elevator to the fourth story flat, looking out across Glendale Park. It was not the area Constantine had called his home. He had owned a flat of his own, in an area where he routinely had to fix his own flooding issues and secure his door against things more mundane than demons. But this place was a little cute, hardwood floors, marble countertops, modernized cupboards. He stared into the fridge which had no food as Dante walked around the furnished flat, checking out the sofa, the sofa and the futon where they were respectly expected to sleep.

"How long are we going to be here, exactly?" Dante asked as he peered past him into the depressingly empty fridge. He was a long way away from the place he called home, and he was just beginning to feel the edginess of homesickness already. Lady knew he was leaving; she had prepared for something like this to happen, in case a big payday like a government job came up. For such an occasion, she had a spare bedroom she lived in while he was gone.

Constantine counted some bills in his wallet, eyeballing the devil hunter from the corner of his eye. He had a lot of time to think since that day after the halfie had saved him from the cold. He kept it to himself, but he had been a little more than just intellectually stimulated by Dante's very existence. Now he had actively gone out of his way to help Constantine, he was convinced that something about Dante was integrally more different than any specimen of half-breed he had ever come across. John Constantine knew he was only a man and that his experiences with the supernatural were a drop in the bucket compared to the accumulated knowledge of all exorcists in the entire world...

But no one ever said anything about a demon called Sparda who had given up his own POWER for the human world. No demon in the entire realm of the Abyss was that selfless, that sacrificing.

It rubbed John the wrong way entirely. His eyes followed the red coated man around as he walked to the window and stared out across Glendale, watching the traffic move at a morning rush crawl. "We're going for a walk, I hope. I feel... different here. Something is definitely stirring. Places that are full of the dark shit. I want to get in there and rip out the heart of it and make it dead."

"LA is pretty big. Gonna be a big heart to rip out. And trust me, if it's destroying evil you're after, you're gonna end up here a long time." Constantine joined him at his side with a scowl as he peered at Los Angeles; Dante got the feeling that what he said was more out of experience than cynicism - or maybe it was just both. "Let's just concentrate on what we came here to do, although," he added with a sudden wide smile, "I'd love to just have an old-fashioned excorcism. Screaming, yelling, ropes and holy incantations, dropping mirrors on cars - fun times."

At this, Dante never raised an eyebrow. He just threw his head back and laughed. "Mm. Sounds like a great time." With a tone that both confused and alarmed Constantine, he bent close rather conspiratorily, his lips at his ear, "Am I invited?"

"Only if you're playing for the same team." Before he could even think how the words could be interpreted, Constantine answered with a similar tone. He quickly peered at Dante's reflection in the mirror-polished window with a sudden inexplicable dread that washed him from head to foot in a cold light-headedness. How would the half-demon react? The two men looked each other in the eyes in the reflection, sharing the uncomfortable moment. Then, again, Dante laughed softly and stepped away from the glass.

"So you do have a sense of humor. I like that, exorcist." He headed for the door. "I'm going for that walk. You look like shit, so you better stay here and catch up on sleep."

"I'm fine," Constantine said. He sounded short of breath, kept looking through his black hair with a noticable change in the way his eyes appeared as he gazed at the devil hunter. "Just let me pick up some coffee along the way. Then we'll get to."

-----------

It never occured to Jackie to stay indoors today. She never could have known that what should have been a routine visit with her favorite candyman would end up to be something that would change her entire existence as she knew it.

Jackie had no intention of getting nailed today of all days and she had too much to do in the next couple weeks. She had to finish her exams in the morning, undertake a particularly stressful family event the coming weekend, which involved a father she never knew who had finally returned from the big box up in state penitentiary. Her mom was sick again - the breast cancer had returned once again and this time it seemed like it was there to stay. With that in mind, it was all it took to keep her mind from snapping in half due to all the worries and thoughts crushing her resolve into oblivion. She was starting to think she needed to double up on her anxiety meds... or at least take out more time in the day to get baked.

It wasn't her favorite time of the year also. At any minute she would step outside just to grab something to eat at the corner store, and come home soaked with sweat or rain, depending on the temperament of the weather.

She took the bus to head into the bad neighborhood where she had to go in order to find her man. She gave up her seat by the window in the front for someone just so she might be able to build up some good karma to make up for yesterday's fiasco at the Subway downtown, when she'd nearly bitten the head off the woman in front of her for taking so long deciding whether she wanted honey mustard or ranch dressing on her veggie sub. That part of her stress management was something she also had to work on - she did not like to style herself an angry person, but she sure got pissed off easily.

Jackie walked off the bus stop and pulled her hood up across her sandy blonde hair; she was tanned from head to toe due to her enjoying the sun whenever she wasn't baking at her friend's house or partaking in her other vices - usually including Fritos, Mountain Dew, and laughing her ass of watching her friends play embarassing Wii games and executing potentially offensive hand motions. Her ragged tennis shoes could do to be replaced, but when you're in college, when comfortable apparel is almost a must, she never thought about that stuff at all. A gray college sweatshirt had been hastily pulled over a pale beige lacy camisole and snug-fitting jeans, just in case a rare hot temperature spiked around noon and two before plummeting into cooler climes again. She had never quite entered into the heavy stuff, but earlier that week she had gotten a call from her peddler about something new she probably would be interested in. It was new, but it was "totally trippy", he said.

The added stress probably had skewed her judgment. Or maybe it was the two percoset she had taken earlier that morning. Either way, she was going today to see him in about ten minutes and it was going to be a learning experience, that's for sure.

The young college hopeful turned down a quiet alley that always smelled like vomit and the sour old urine smell never quite went away. It drove away anyone who wasn't ballsy enough to go looking for the type of thrills that this secret hideout provided. As soon as she strolled toward the freshly painted red door that marked the entrance to all veteran users, she felt her heartrate quicken.

If her parents ever found out, she'd be screwed. Her mom was the type who would call the cops on her own daughter, but only because she cared so much. That, and mom would probably die of the stress it caused her before she died of the cancer.

Inside, she squeezed through a dirty hallway, a pile of cardboard boxes broken down and shoved up against the wall, some empty beer bottles collected in the corner in front of a pair of doors across from each other - one door led into an empty storage that used to be an apartment, the door on the right. The left door went into her peddler's. She avoided the suspicious looking puddle of fluid near the latter while knocking the code. Rat-a-tat, tat tat, rat-a-tat tat.

A few seconds later, a series of locks came undone within and the door slowly swung open, revealing a zombified man in blue pajama pants with black cat silhouettes, a white beater and track marks on his skinny, naired arms. In the living room/bedroom beyond, the bookshelf was littered with dragons and unicorn nicknacks and his walls plastered with eighties groups of all music genres, his taste by far a smattering of everything colorful and dizzying and black and death. He definitely played for both teams, but for the most part, his one and only love was the highest high he could achieve without total self-annihilation. How often he had been close to death, she dare not count. Their relationship was purely business, but she had once counted him almost as a friend.

"Hey, Ashton."

"You're... early." His bangs had been dyed black, the rest bleached white and a mess of spikes and long pieces and layers. It was his latest bid for individuality in a world where everyone else was straining to blend in as if their lives depended on it. So far, his various addictions had spared his good looks, but that was about to change in a year or two.

"I know." She looked nervously down the hallway, biting her thumbnail. "Can I come in now? I hate standing out here like this."

"Yeah, yeah, sure." He walked inside and cleaned off the clothes from his futon bed which was right in front of the bookshelf, where he could stare at his collection all day beneath the blacklight hanging at the top. Incense burned on another end table, candles burning - he was into all kinds of fucked up shit. A mirror-top table had lines of coke, OxyContin, artillary, and a black design painstakingly poured onto a second glass mirror elevated by a stack of books. The black powder was illuminated by an array of red candles burning.

Ashton was a professional burnout. He was also one of the few people Jackie had found herself attracted to simply because of his connection to things she thought would never bother with. She knew her habit was bad, and this was getting worse - the formality of the mirror set-up gave her the creeps. She was walking into an addict's manifestation of a trip and she didn't know if she'd come out the same person she was when she entered.

"Is... Is this what you came to show me?"

Ashton walked toward the mirrors, his hips swaying, a little world of his own flickering in the dancing flames. "I can promise you, this is totally safe. This is high quality shit and it's new and I had to even trade some of my stash for it. It's called Shadow Dust."

"It doesn't look safe."

"It's all right. Trust me. I know, I said the same thing, but the juggler said that the Big Man was damn sure it was safe."

Jackie shoved her hands into her hoodie pockets, staring at the design. Everything about this screamed "RUN". A sinister skull sat in the center of the black powder's design - some kind of farm animal, horns curving above its head - clearly fake, but its deep-set, empty sockets seemed to bear their own glow. The longer she looked, the more mesmerized she became by the pattern itself. She stepped closer, her eyes glistening and tearing up from all the incense in the air.

"Will you... Will you let me try it? How does it... um, feel?"

Ashton looked at her, his hollow face tragic and gorgeously smiling, a spot of lipstick smeared across his cheek she hadn't noticed before. "Like you're someone else. Bigger. Stronger. Like you can just sit back and fuck all. Like you're absolutely... perfect."

-----

Constantine fidgeted across the street, drinking from a styrofoam cup of black coffee. In spite of the increasing temperature, he insisted on wearing his long black coat, looking for all the world like an undertaker awaiting his Hearse to cruise along and pick him up in time for the service.

Dante, on the other hand, was across the street. He was talking to a man - a pusher, from the looks of him. The nervous habits of pushers were noticable from a mile away if you knew how to recognize them. He was even more anxious now, with Dante leaning over him casually making conversation. John had to avoid looking at them too much because it would scare the pusher away. He also had to avoid looking at him because, for the umpteenth time, he had to stop himself from staring.

The half-breed seemed to have a shocking familiarity with the drug underworld and how it was supposed to work. Constantine had no interest in desecrating his body after he had made a vow to start deporting demons back to Hell. His job was more important than seeking cheap thrills. But Dante was, again, a mystery. An ever unravelling conundrum that broke every law Constantine thought was unbreakable. If nothing else, then what was supposed to be law also had loopholes. Even divine, holy things like demons and angels had hidden go-arounds he knew nothing about.

The monster comfortably leaned against the wall, smiling as he made arrangements to meet the pusher's supplier. His naked friendliness and open smile must have made the little junkie sperm feel at ease. It certainly made Constantine feel better, knowing at least ONE of them knew their way around.

Finally, after what felt like ages, Dante walked off. Constantine waited five minutes, then wandered in the opposite directions, to walk around the block and meet with him. By the time he got there, he tossed his cup into the trash and lit up a cigarette to get his next new vice in. Dante tried to pretend it didn't make him annoyed.

"So?" John asked.

"His supplier lives just down the road from here. Go down an alley somewhere, there's a red door, and inside, down the hall, it's one of the two doors in there."

"How do you know he's not bullshitting?" Constantine demanded, folding his arms over his chest. It's demons he could deal with, but human beings eluded him completely.

Dante winked, shrugging. "You can't bullshit a bullshitter." Without adieu, he started off toward the location, hands in his pockets, eyes furtively checking the streets, the windows. "I got the phone for our special wingy friends, in case."

John stalked alongside him, across the street, through the foggy morning light. A bus rolled up the street as soon as they crossed. "Oh, so all that shit about Sparda - that was bullshit?"

"As much as I wish it was, it isn't. All true. Scout's honor. I just meant, he was a little dipshit and I talked him in circles until he told me what I wanted to know." He shrugged. "It wasn't hard, he was so fucking baked it was kind of sad."

"I hope this is worth the risk. I just hope the guy doesn't have a gun."

Dante gave a sharp barking laugh. "You don't move in these kinda circles, do you, Mister Exorcist?"

"My idea of a good time involves a Bible, a crucific, and a few phrases of Latin. No, I don't think so."

"You don't indulge much?" It was meant as a jab at his extracurricular activities, so to speak, but Constantine felt a prickle of hurt.

John said, "I don't think so. If I did, I was a kid, and a time so long ago I don't remember much. Not that I'd want to. Did a couple other stupid things I'd rather just forget."

A long pause, while they waited at another cross walk. Then Dante's voice cut through the hubbub of the city, and it got quiet all around. "Sorry again."

"For what?"

"It keeps coming up, that thing you did. You got a pissed look." They crossed the street to a narrower street and the alley just as the pusher mentioned. John stopped here, clearing his throat, puffing at his Silk Cut.

"I'll wait here."

"Come on. I'm just a regular customer, remember? And you're the disgruntled college professor looking to replace his last supplier."

College professor? John thought, amused by the analogy, while he stamped out his cigarette and followed the taller white-haired man into the alley. The smell was a deterrent, and it would have worked if it wasn't for Dante being so absolutely nonchalant. He had wanted so badly to ask if Dante had ever "indulged", as he put it. He tried to imagine Dante with a roach in his mouth and nearly choked on his next breath.

There was so much about Dante he had no idea about. He kept assuming Dante shouldn't act like a human at all - and yet, seeing him sit back with a beer last night had seemed so natural to Dante. Carrying on a conversation about the reality TV show they had been forced to watch, bantering back and forth, was something that was second nature to the monster cloaked in the man's skin. There was no demon lurking behind his blue eyes, no ulterior motives, no sharp teeth and fangs. Constantine didn't feel the soul-jarring shock of merely glancing into his eyes, didn't the demon beneath nor the black broken wings uncurl from his back and spread to darken the whole room.

The pair entered through the red door. Constantine had to walk behind Dante, careful of the floor. At the door, Dante froze, his nostrils flaring, his blues intensifying. He knocked - the code the pusher sperm gave him tapped out softly.

The door didn't open. Dante tried the doorknob - unlocked - and threw it open.

A demon hovered over the woman on the futon, white hair down to his back, and black, thick bangs covering eyes the color of drying blood. The demon looked up slowly, its tongue moving back between his lips from lapping at a woman's flat stomach as she lay prone on the bed. Her bare stomach displayed a thick line of black powder on her belly. The demon seemed to be enjoying it as much as he would enjoy a sexual encounter. He wore the skin of a man, but each feature was distorted beyond recognition of humanity - aside from the red eyes, the face was hollowed out, elongated fangs and claws, limbs that seemed to have broken the very skin from increasing in length.

Ebony was in Dante's hand before Constantine could even see past him into the room.

"What the--" He shoved past him. Dante's shot was fucked - the bullet shattered a black dragon bust and the pieces went flying everywhere.

The demon screamed furiously, leaping from the futon at the window. Dante sprinted across the room, jumped through the window, rolled across the pavement with his gun following the rail-thin creature scuttling up the wall of the building across the street. He rapid-fired, the gunshots echoing up and down the street; people stuck their heads out just a moment from their windows, then quickly yanked them back in and drew the shades.

Each bullet met its mark - Dante was a damn surgeon with Ebony. The creature fell to the ground across the street after having taken too many hits with those super-effective projectiles. The devil hunter ran across the street, grabbing the demon who had shed the ugly in favor of remaining safe from human eyes.

But Dante could see it lurking beneath the burnout's skin.

"Ashton?" Dante asked politely, burying the muzzle under his jaw and lifting his head up.

He saw a human being staring back at him, but thinly veiled was the demon. The demon screamed inside, trapped, before the injuries on the human's body claimed his soul.

"You fucking shot me," Ashton gasped - only it was with the demon's voice. Blood seeped from under his armpit. His eyes were bloodshot and blackened by the demon's touch. Dante relaxed his grip on the thick, bleached hair and lay him down on the sidewalk.

Ashton was bleeding to death and probably the cops would be alerted - if they cared about this shat-on corner of LA - to come investigate the gunshots. He stood up slowly, letting the druggie alone. Constantine came huffing to the broken window and shouted at him.

"HEY! The girl's still in here!"

Dante turned the gun on Ashton and shot him a final time; another unholy scream issued forth before it finally began to dissolve into a formless mass of burning ashes, blown away across the street. Then he hurried back across and swung into the window, ignoring the drug paraphernalia littering the floor from where the demon had made its escape.

The woman sat up, her dirty blonde hair scattered around her, her eyes shot with an influential substance ravaging her system.

"What the hell are you doing in here? What... WHAT ARE YOU?" She stared at Dante, her chest rising and falling with her spastic breaths. Constantine grabbed her wrists and sat on her. Black dust spilled from her belly onto the futon.

She kept hyperventilating - but each breath was shorter and shorter. Dante grabbed for her purse and dumped its contents onto the floor, then snatched up an inhaler. "Asthmatic and a druggie? Wonderful."

"It might mess her up bad."

"I didn't take anything!" she cried hoarsely. "I swear I didn't take anything! I'm sorry, please don't arrest me!"

"We're not gonna arrest you. Who are you?"

"Jackie. Jacqueline. Oh shit please don't arrest me don't tell my mom, fuck!" She grabbed the inhaler as soon as Constantine let her wrists be free and sucked in the steroid that would lessen the inflammation.

Dante crossed his arms, meeting Constantine's look of horror and outrage and mostly hatred. "The FUCK was that? Just charge in here when there's a woman involved, just a godamn kid -"

"I had it under control."

"IT COULD HAVE KILLED HER!"

Jackie Jacqueline Please-Don't-Arrest-Me smacked Constantine in the balls and fell off the futon, scrambled for the door. Dante grabbed her by the back of her sweatshirt and swung her around to her feet. Constantine swore, giving her a second look.

"Look. Lady." He glanced around the room, his heart calming down reluctantly. "We just need information. What's your disease anyway?"

"My... disease?"

"What do you get from this guy?"

"Pot. Sometimes, um, pills."

"Uh-huh. And today?"

"He wanted to..." She started to blush, no longer struggling to get out of Dante's grasp. She took another gasp from the inhaler. Then she held her arms tightly around herself, her messed up hair falling over her eyes. "...He wanted me to try something new. Dust or something.... then he... he said he'd show me how he handled it and watch him. He wanted to lick it off of me. I don't know what happened, I just... let him. It was like something got into my head that I should just do what he says."

"Shadow Dust?"

"Yeah!" She pointed vaguely toward the mirror set-up. "It's over there." Her voice cracked, and she started to cry in Dante's hold. He let go of her, since she was preoccupied with her stress management for the time being.

Constantine walked over, then lifted his phone from his pocket to contact Dowerty about the find. He hoped they had had just as much luck as he and Constantine had.

"Shit!"

Dante swore as Jackie ran for the bathroom, banging open the medicine cabinet. He ran her down, and seconds before the gun went off in her hand, he jerked her arm so she successfully exploded the entire mirror cabinet and all its contents. She was spasming, her fingers numbly clutching the fire arm until she dropped it. He grabbed her around the waist, pulling her backwards out of the bathroom and putting her on the futon again. Pinkish foam dribbled from the corner of her mouth.

"Dowerty - yeah, that's the address - damn it, _hurry_, I think she shot herself--" Constantine hung up and rushed over, watching the vulgar scene of the young college student convulsing with increased violence. Then her eyes rolled back to show the whites - which slowly began to turn black.

She grew still. Dante stared, his mouth turning into a furious white line, then a silent snarl. "Back off."

Constantine stayed back. He gripped the holy shotgun he kept under his coat, pulling a lighter and a piece of cloth from his pocket.

Jackie opened her mouth and started to speak in a rapid-fire language that made Constantine's ears feel like they were bleeding and popping, as if he were dropping in altitude far too quickly. Fortunately for him, he recognized it - and confirmed then and there that she was a liar. Shadow Dust was in her, and whatever it was supposed to do, this was one of the many desired effects.

Unfortunately, Hellspeak was one of the few languages Constantine didn't understand too well. He just hoped Dante had taken a foreign language course in Hell or whatever damned school he came from where he had also learned to be a demon slayer.

Jackie swore colorfully, apparently, then twisted her body to aim it like a GUN at Dante, screaming something. No, it was "Sparda". "FILTHY SPARDA! BETRAYER, SON OF A WHORE!" The screaming became intelligible English, louder and louder. Dante just scowled through it, knowing full well that as long as he was there, the demon wouldn't dare move.

Finally she grew slack, the words ending as if they had been physically cut off with a knife. Her eyes closed and she went still only with the occasional shiver and twitch of someone coming down from a feverish high.

"What was she saying?"

"I wish I didn't know. Because I'm telling you right now, you don't wanna know. But I'm getting ideas and I'll share 'em with you."


	5. Chapter 5

AU: This is been a long time coming. I'm living on a motel off R9 in Upstate NY and it's a nightmare finding work in a shithole town where I live. Writing at least keeps me remarkably comfortable with my surroundings as long as I don't talk to the shady people that live in this area. And I've had people who have lived here all their lives that people here are shady… so you can imagine my comfort level going outside at night (which I don't do if I can help it. So far, I haven't had to. So yay.)

**Chapter 5**

Shadow Dust spilled from between Dante's fingers. They had a kilo of it in front of them in the Angels head office in LA in the lab area. Constantine sat at a long fold-out table in a metal fold-out chair, a smoldering cigarette between his teeth and his eyes bloodshot from sleepless nights in the city that had once been Constantine's home. It was hard to believe that days ago, he had been drenched in cold river water and struggling to get through each cold night with visions plaguing every hour of his sleep... most of them involving the demonic Ashton and his bizarre transformation.

The college girl, who had been exposed to taking the black powder known as SD, was being detained in an office separate and closely observed by two Angels in black uniforms whose uncanny similarity to one another reminded Constantine of twins.

Dante gently dusted his hands of the drug and rinsed off his hands in the sink, before pulling on his fingerless brown gloves. The devil hunter's eyes were glittering with an unhealthy amount of curiosity as he gazed at the powdered substance; the powder really did not look like much at all. It looked exactly like it had been described - like ground up black pepper, but not as fine. Then he leaned close and sort of wafted its 'scent' to his nose. Then he wrinkled his face in a look of disgust.

"Ugh. That's damn strong."

"Huh?"

"It smells like demon shit. That's how they all smell when they burn back to Hell. But not just any kind of burning. A ritual has to take place for this kind of thing to remain. Usually they burn - like our late Ashton, poor bastard - and blow away in the wind." He tossed his head with a laugh. "This Shadow Dust is demon ashes... like some kind of unholy gunpowder."

"Okay." Constantine was putting stock in this idea. Humans always sold their souls by dabbling in immortal affairs anyway. "So where would you commit this mass ritual to get so much Shadow Dust, seeing as how it's in such high demand?"

"That's a good question. I'm not a detective, sparky. You're gonna have to ask our little feathered friends for that kind of info." He slid his hands into his pockets and walked to the window, opening the shade and peering into the overcast gloom. It was rather unseasonably wet outside. It was still too bright for Constantine's liking.

The forensic Angel who had breathed the noxious combination of SD and holy liquids had been keeping the journal and this, too, was in front of Constantine. The journal described a normal routine for the forensic's girl; no new dreams or visions or strange bodily reactions. Just a fatigue that she had decided to attribute to traveling out here, where it was hard to adjust to jet lag. She also wrote, more than once, how Dante was the most attractive specimen of male she had ever seen. Constantine had no idea what to think of that and he mildly felt annoyed that she never once mentioned his good looks.

'John Constantine,' she wrote, 'is a capable person but he can be a bit unapproachable. I don't know what to think when he is working on this case. He seems like he needs a good night sleep. I hope he doesn't become a liability for this case. And he hardly looks like the guy we've been hearing all about. It's a surprise he survived that dip in the river. Brr! It should have been me in that van while Mister Dante undressed me. I wouldn't've minded at all!' As if to underscore her inexperience, there, doodled at the end of the final sentence, a scribbled little heart. It nearly made Constantine want to puke.

Constantine himself was amazed that he had taken to his encounter with hypothermia so well. He breathed a little unevenly, closing the girl's journal and handing it off to the woman who would bring it back to her. He puffed the cigarette for a long time before he was suddenly approached by Dowerty himself. Vascoe joined him. The pair seemed inseparable.

"We've got a lead. The college girl in there's just a new user - but the effects are still on her. She can See things, but not like you can, John. But she's told us a lot simply from those side effects." Dowerty grimaced. "It's kind of a twisted form of passing down memories. After ingesting Shadow Dust, she seems to be now reliving vicariously some other person or a demon's memories. She's still aware of us and being in the room with us, so she's able to relate to us what she's going through."

Vascoe nodded. He looked a bit pale, glancing sidelong at the one-way glass room where the college girl was drinking from a paper cup filled with cold water. She quivered and rubbed her eyes, weakness evidence in her every angle and curve. She had been so embarassed by her possession that she refused to even look at Dante and Constantine after regaining control of herself. After that, she had gone through a second trip and foamed at the mouth, eyes rolled back and limbs flopping senselessly.

"She seems to indicate one thing clearly - there's definitely a place where SD is... well, manufactured, if I can use the term loosely. The ritual doesn't take place anywhere near here. But one of the big sellers is downtown, runs a big club called the Sight." Vascoe rolled up his sleeves and folded his arms, looking pointedly at Constantine.

"Wonder why," Dante murmured from the window, who was listening all the same.

"My sentiments exactly," Vascoe smirked. "But being... ah, who we are, we can only provide outside assistance and guidance."

"I'm sorry? I don't get it." Constantine leaned back and stared at Vascoe, then looked to Dowerty to be more concise.

"Ah. Sorry. We're asking you and Dante to get into the Sight and find the seller any way you can. We've narrowed down his or her location there, but that's all we can divine from the sources in town and from Jacquelyn's visions."

"What about Jacquelyn then? You're just going to keep her locked up and use her like some kind of supernatural reciever radio?" Constantine didn't like that - not one bit. But if it helped them end the chaos that SD was creating, then maybe it was for the best. All the same... he had to try to put himself in her shoes. He felt trapped by his own mind sometimes - and the things he could see.

"For the time being. Her family's been notified, minus the... darker details. All right?"

Dante and Constantine shared a look. Then Dante shrugged, standing up. "I don't need to get ready. This place have any kind of theme?"

"I think what you mean is you don't want to stand out like a sore thumb," the exorcist muttered as he threw his body from the seat with a huff and strode over to the door. "I'll meet you outside the flat, Dante."

Every minute spent near the Devil Hunter, the more he started to see the demon living beneath his skin, flickering to the surface with every flash of heightened annoyance or even amusement. It scared him, but somehow thrilled him at the same time. Dante could move around among humans and somehow Constantine believed him to be perfectly safe. He had to. After all, he had been stripped damn near naked in his presence and somehow hadn't suffered a horrible fate involving ropes and sadistic play.

A cigarette lost a piece of ash while hanging from between his lips; he waited outside, as promised, for Dante. The devil hunter had changed costumes as it were. So had Constantine. So, now, instead of the rumpled suit look, Constantine had elected a black hoodie and eyeliner. He wanted to melt into the shadows, not glow like a firefly in the club. When Dante joined him at his side, he nearly did a violent double-take. In the damp dark gloom, it was chill as late fall in the northeast end of the States, but the man wore a satiny black unbuttoned shirt with grayish stripes that flashed with hidden threads of silver, low hip-hugging jeans and a thick dark belt with a gleaming plain silvery buckle. Nothing else about him had changed. His red overcoat concealed his twin guns; hand cannons Constantine had only glimpsed from before. They did not frighten him so much as gave a little insight about a halfie bastard child who relied on fire power rather than his own natural born strength to resolve conflicts.

Which reminded him. "Where's your, uh, meat cleaver?" He glanced at the gunstraps cleverly hidden under the beautiful shirt. "Or are you planning on something more covert?"

"My dear Watson," the devil hunter joked, "you're about to find out that I am _anything _but covert." Then, in an eyeblink, he had snatched the cigarette from between his lips and crushed it into his palm. "Let's go. You look like one seriously half-assed scene kid."

"You're a charmer." Constantine narrowed his eyes, then climbed into the driver's side of the car. It was an unremarkable vehicle. They wouldn't park it right in front of the club, of course, but arrive as walk-ins and establish the nature of its population.

They moved side by side. Dante's predatory stature was masked beneath a chill smile, glittering ice blue eyes that almost bordered on silver white. Every creature that laid eyes on him as they made their approach completely ignored Constantine. In a way, that was good; people would recognize Constantine probably before Dante, especially in this city.

But Dante - he was pure masculine sensuality, full of power and dark promise, commanding everyone's eyes to him. And everyone did look and kept on looking, with varying degrees of hunger or remorse. He was either out of their league at the least to the few who desired attention and very promising challenge at the most to those who sought a conquest. He certainly captured Constantine's attention in front of the flat earlier. But now he understood - Dante didn't just boast of his father's power, he commanded a deep and throbbing energy that made everything around him gravitate to him.

Luckily the general disposition of the crowd as they were ushered into the club by the bouncers was just fascination.

"You don't blend very well either, you know," Constantine muttered in annoyance. The music wasn't so very loud yet; he was brushing shoulders with someone else and when he glanced to the side, he saw a beautiful woman's face become cracked and burned with the touch of Hell.

The other male seemed to soak in the attention for a few moments before his own demeanor changed as smoothly as one picture to the next in a photograph projector. "I don't know what we're looking for. I would just ask around." He hesitated, smirking softly. "Wait for a hawker to come around. Sniff out where the pusher sperm lurks in this place. We'll meet at that glowing green middle bar counter in an hour."

Constantine glared at Dante's back while being ordered about so casually - but at the same time, his eyes were watching the slow, methodical stride of those hips, upon which was the only defense against aggression in this place where monsters bumped elbows with humans.

In moments, Dante had proven something else - he could melt into a crowd with as much effort as he could seduce everyone in a room by merely being there. Jealousy and an unnameable emotion gripped Constantine as he wove his way to another bar. There was the main middle bar - the one glowing with blue recessed lights beneath a thick glass, so each drink was illuminated from below. But there were two other bars on each side of the long, vaulting rectangular club room. Dante had vanished in a crowd going west, to a recessed little bar illuminated with red lights, so Constantine went to the east bar, illuminated with conversely blueish white illumination.

Armed with cold hard bills to talk for him when Constantine's charm failed (as it often did), he situated himself among people at the bar. He ordered a drink that he did not touch except once. Then he simply listened. He strained his ears to feel out for something - off. He saw both half-angels and half-demons mingling, trying to fit in with their own kind. In a world where a war was being fought all around them, these creatures would try to be something they yearned for and sometimes even resented: Man.

For Man had the choice of free will. Half-demons and half-angels were never allowed the same promise of freedom that Man had been given. But sometimes, they tried to create a third option between Heaven and Hell - a paradise of middle ground. For them, it was simply a far off impossible dream that made their hearts ache. The middle ground was earth, and it was not peaceful by any means as many middle grounds often are. It was a battle field where suffering and joy could be uttered in the same breath.

Constantine knew only a few things. Hope and redemption were among them. General disdain was a good one, too. He was condemned - so he understood the path was already laid out, as permenant as the Silk Road. But being human also gave him a single weakness, a chink in his spiritual armor - he had to be given another chance. A merciful creator would allow it.

Wouldn't He?

Maybe that's why the halfies all hated him so much. Hated all Mankind at times. Freedom to choose was better than wine, better than sex, better than sitting with your loved one on a starlit night with all eternity before you.

Constantine sold it away for absolute relief from his God-given "gift" to see the world as it _really_ was.

The agony and despair of it gnawed at him. During those times, he lit up a cigarette to make himself feel as if he had some choice in the matter of when - and how - he was about to die. Which illustrated why he smoked so much in the first place.

It turned out that he didn't need to use money at all to get anyone to talk. In moments, a young looking creature slid next to him. It was a lovely piece of jail bait, so young and wide-eyed that it barely registered as female or male until she spoke.

She wore some kind of shear longsleeve shirt that covered up her small, impish hands; beneath the sheer black shirt she covered her small nipples with flesh tone triangles of fabric that was a bra covering almost miniscule breasts. He supposed it was intentional, because from a distance and in the dark, it looked like she wore nearly nothing beneath that shirt. Her black vinyl skirt barely ended where her pubic mound began. He kept his eyes locked on her completely black eyes, set in a round babyish face. Her hair was long and straight and electric blue.

"Hello, stranger." Her voice was light and airy, husky with something he hoped wasn't lust. "Do you smoke?"

He looked at the pack of cigarettes loosely in his own fingers. "Yeah. Are you seriously going to ask me if you could smoke one?" He smirked. He was hoping the female's age was no mystery to her.

Her voice tinkled through the pulsating music and reached his ears like a slap of cold water out of the blue. His eyes were riveted to her slender throat. Then he stared at her eyes, those black depthless eyes. It was like staring at a painting devoid of color, of life. But that sound that erupted from her throat was laughter.

"You're a fun one. I can't wait to play with you." The girl reached over and slid her hand over the top of his, and when it came away it had a cigarette delicately between her two small fingers. Then she produced a lighter from somewhere in a small purse hanging from a leather strap attached to her miniscule skirt. She produced a flame from the little lighter and held the cigarette butt to his lips. He took the cigarette. She offered the flame. He leaned forward and watched her eyes, her hand, every inch of him quivering with the urge to run and find Dante as quickly as possible.

This tiny miniature whore scared the shit out of him.

But he inhaled and the smoke filled his starving lungs and his eyes slid shut just for a second. Then he exhaled slowly and leaned closer, playing into her ploy but aware of his own vulnerability. Dante was somewhere in this club. He had to be watching him some of the time, concentrating on finding a way to reach the dealer some other time.

"I'm looking for a good time," he said quietly as he watched her beyond the small, low flicker of the flame. "But I'm tired of the same ol'-same ol'." He smiled slowly and sleepily, leaning his cheek on his fist.

The young seductress looked perplexed for a moment, if not predatorily amused. "Oh? What does the dark man want, then?" She was too young for this game to be human. But in his experience, sometimes the most blackest atrocities occured among man. Still, the way her eyes seemed to fill his field of vision completely was not natural. She was a demon - some kind of demon hawker, because she was selling something - as well as her other assets - to her best advantage.

"What are you in the market for?" she whispered. It was loud in here. But her voice rang in his head as if they were standing in a small room about the relative size of a closet. He could imagine such a voice was meant to caress, to entice. But he felt only disgust... and her true nature was already revealed. It didn't make him feel any better about it.

"I want something new." He didn't want to reveal too much. If he said he heard about Shadow Dust, she might get suspicious. "I don't just want to feel like someone else. I want to be someone else. I don't want to be me anymore." He half-forced a look of desolation on his face. "I don't... like... me. You understand? I want to be someone else. _Not me._ Not anymore." He put as much hopeless inflection in his voice as he could manage in this small little hidden moment.

The female's black eyes widened some, then seemed to harden as her imagined hooks sank into him. The flame had vanished some time ago. She sat back, her teeth glittering in a insatiable smile. "All right. It's all right." Her tiny hand came forward again and stroked his arm. "Be at peace, little lost darkling. I know what you need." She flowed to her feet and twirled around delicately on her sparkling slipper shoes - black sequins blinked up at him in the pale white lights of the underglow on the bar.

"Follow me," she sang into his mind. He flicked the ashes onto the floor and rose to his feet, following her. Constantine was trying to look for Dante without looking like he was seeking anyone out of the crowd. That the beautiful man was nowhere in sight worried Constantine. But he had his own hidden agenda. His own weaponry was hidden on his body. As far as he experienced, Demons couldn't smell it and Demons wouldn't know it was there until he revealed it visually. Or employed on their unsuspecting bodies.

They wove through the crowd together. He had no easy time keeping an eye on the tiny girl-child masking over the true monster. Up above, on the second echelon of the club, there was a glass display that served, at least on this side, as a one-way mirror. He could not see in but any number of people could be watching them from above. She was leading him behind the central bar, toward the back where a spiral steel stairway would take him up and the mirrored world beyond would digest him and he might never have a chance to return. And worst of all, if he stopped now, he might not have another chance. The plan was to stop and talk about what they found out in an hour. It had barely been twenty minutes. The exorcist was at odds: go through with his gut instinct now, or wait it out and find Dante at the agreed point later?

He met the girl at the foot of the stairs. The sound of silver bells rang in his ears. He decided then and there that he would wait. He hesitated, acting coolly, looking around, as if taking one last look at a world he never knew. "Wait a minute, honey," he said morosely. "I'm gonna need a drink before I get into this. Let me get a drink."

The female hovered at the stairs, her eyes narrowing at him. Something told him to watch his steps here. He looked back at her, his eyes growing hazy and dull-witted. "Will you be my baby-sitter?" he whined, reaching for her. She snuck closer and wrapped her little arms around his waist, peering up at him with hungry adoration.

"I would be honored. But let's get your drink first." So it was to the green bar they went. He peered around quickly, then gritted his teeth. Now it was even worse because he would have to drink whatever it was he ordered – in the hope that it would give him enough time to see Dante floating around somewhere and flag him down. At least he knew that to get to the 'better' drugs, it was up that stairway in the back.

Or maybe there was nothing there but a cold bed about to be warmed and a night he would have rather forgotten.

All he had now was to drink, as slowly as possible, and wait as patiently but convincingly as possible for his first experience with Shadow Dust. He hoped.

"What's your name?" he asked the girl, hoping to stall for time. Demons loved nothing more than to talk about themselves.

The little demoness smiled and offered a name that was probably one she only used among her victims. "My name… my name is Violette." She smiled fangedly. "Now will you get to tell me yours, little one?"

It struck a chord of annoyance that "Violette" was turning the spotlight on him and had the audacity to call him little one. If she meant in terms of longevity of life, then yes, he was quite small compared to her.

"John it is, then." He smiled, ordering something he could handle in small doses, that would take a long time to get him drunk. If he kept her talking, maybe he wouldn't have to really drink – only appear to do so at certain times then get distracted by her 'unearthly beauty'. He was a master at that kind of bullshit. Maybe he even thought himself immune to charms. Either way, he was playing an entirely different game than he was used to.

Suddenly he saw a white-haired gentleman walking arm-and-arm with another man toward the bar. The pair seemed inseparable. Dante shoved him toward the bar where Constantine was sitting, but toward a seat farther away. Constantine was inwardly cursing. And now the girl was sliding closer to him, her hands moving over his shoulder and his arm in an admiring fashion.

He had to resist the urge to backhand her and tell her to go home to mommy and stop groping his bicep.

"John." The girl tittered at the name and its singular implication.

Dante, farther down the bar, leaned in close and whispered something into the other male's ear casually. The male laughed softly, his cheeks stained pink, and Constantine fought not to grimace.

Violette attached herself to him, going so far now as to squeeze herself on his lap. She was between the bar edge and his chest now. And she was turned sideways. So he had no choice but to awkwardly accommodate for her, as tiny and weird as she was. Other than making him feel like a pedophile, he also felt immediately trapped and he could no longer see the handsome devil hunter making some kind of nonsense with another man. It irked him, rubbed the wrong way – and it shouldn't have. Whatever. Demons were unnatural anyway. So half-devils had their own sexual quirks. He couldn't help feeling cheated.

If Constantine had to choose between looking like a pedophile or looking like a fag, he would rather be a fag with someone of legal age than look like a damn cradle robber.

"That's not what I meant," John murmured.

Violette seemed to take offense. "So you don't want to get high, you don't want to drink, and you don't want to fuck. What exactly did you come here for, 'John'?" She gripped the arm he had to put around her to keep her from slipping off – and keeping him from falling out of his stool. These stools were not fixed to the floor. He was going to fall over and this stupid annoying little girl demon _whore_ was going to make him look like a fucking sexual deviant anyway because she was annoyed that he wasn't taking her bait.

Her fingernails, Constantine noticed, were pointed and black. The keratin itself was black. And he had an odd gut-reaction not to let her sink those nails into his skin. They might pump him full of whatever sick venom was in those little miniature fangs situated at the tips of her dainty little fingers.

But before he could formulate an answer that came too slow to make a difference in whether she was bored with him or still interested (both options highly likely to end in his demise), another figure appeared, momentarily eclipsed by the girl's head and ridiculously brilliant blue hair. Then Dante was right there. The girl seemed perplexed that a newcomer had gotten involved; Constantine fought with relief and disgust at the same time.

He looked at Dante while Violette was busy checking Dante out. He hoped his eyes said, 'Help me' more than they said 'Get this bitch off of me before I snap her spine like a twig over my knee'.

The smooth-talking bastard offered an insufferably cheerful grin. He looked at Constantine with the same smoky look he had given that other man, who has mysteriously (and conveniently, something in Constantine admitted) disappeared. When the look washed so easily over Constantine, he felt like a man on a bush-walk in Africa and stumbled across a very sleepy but curious lion. A lion who would get up and investigate with every one of his sensory organs. It was that kind of look. It made Constantine feel as winded as a marathon runner.

"Sampling the goods?" he asked Constantine. No, it was Violette he was speaking to.

Dante was still looking into Constantine's face as if searching for evidence of a crime.

"It's none of your business, you whoring son of a bitch," she replied with such scathing venom and ease that it broke Constantine's concentration to hear such profanity coming from a child's lips.

"Then maybe I can speak in a language you understand." Suddenly he grabbed her by the fragile fabric of her sheer shirt, lifted her off Constantine's lap and thrust her to the floor with little more care than one would expect when handling a sack of flour.

Violette, on the floor on her ass, looked up with boiling hatred. "I was about to make a sale, asshole! What the hell is your problem!?"

"This one," Dante said, circling Constantine's shoulders with one long arm casually, "belongs to me."

Then, while Constantine was glued to the barstool, Dante's lips came dangerously close to his ear. "And I don't like to share," his voice drawled in a husky tone that sent every part of Constantine screaming, _DANGER, JOHN CONSTANTINE. DANGER!_ His eyes wandered to the crowd, the moving body of people ignorant to the little drama unfolding, and he couldn't see the doors that were his escape route from here. It was a foolish thing to do.

_Foolish? Absolutely remedial. I have to get out of here._

"Trust me." The phrase tickled his ear and he was still trapped in the half-circle formed of Dante's arm. He forced himself to relax, apologetically meeting Violette's bruised gaze. Her ego must have been stinging, having a sale stolen out from under her by a rockstar beauty – a man, no less.

"Sorry, babe," John sighed, trying to sound as natural as possible. "I guess I'm not buying after all."

Dante protected him from any other advances from her. Violette stood up, picked up what was left of her dignity, and said, "You're a fucking prick." Then she slipped in between a group of companions and vanished like a shark in a night reef seeking other prey.

Dante stayed against his side for a long time, and the prick was actually _laughing_ as if it was all in good fun, a grand wonderful _joke_, the butt of which was really at the expense of Constantine's comfort level. He was miles away from the zone of comfort. He struggled out of his grip just enough to get off the stool and whip around to glare at him, yet at the same time hoping it looked like he was glaring intimately into Dante's face.

"What the fuck was that all about?"

"I was saving your ass from demonic date rape, at best." Dante snorted, still catching giggles from that little escapade.

"What about that guy?" His eyes sought to find the familiar man, but he had been completely eclipsed by Dante's surprise appearance to be memorable. Shit. I should have remembered him. The faces in the crowd became a giant stained blur, and the music was suddenly too loud, the beer too bitter, the lights bright enough to irritate his eyes.

_I'm suffocating._

"I was getting information from him while you were stupidly getting involved in our friendly little friend there." Dante swung away and pushed him back into the stool. He occupied the one next to him and leaned in close. "I saw her leading you to the stairs, so I made it for the bar over here, hoping to keep an eye on you. Then you convinced her to swing back this way."

"She looks like a damn kid."

"I know." His eyes gleamed with a feral hatred as he scanned the crowd momentarily, no doubt looking for her. "Don't be fooled. She would have killed you up there for the asking. Don't you dare pity a monster like her."

"I think she was going to sell me you-know-what," Constantine murmured, making a little motion indicating 'snorting with a rolled up dollar bill'. "I don't know if it that was what she was after. But I noticed the one-way mirror glass and figured it was worth getting up there."

"Sadly for us, I had to scare away our one chance of getting in there."

"So what do we do?"

"My way." Dante let out a slow, playful smile that made Constantine want to punch him in the face.

"No. No fucking way."

"You dance in demonic circles, don't you? I've been itchin' for a new kind of dance." He nearly purred. "We can bully our way up there, but we better do it quick and dirty. Just what you like, right, _stud_?" Then he laughed again, smooched Constantine messily on the cheek, and rose to his feet without another phrase of warning and marched toward the metal stairways leading up to the hidden world behind the one-way looking glass.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: This fanfic is running away with me! So many people are concerned that there will be lemon. But I'll put a warning in THIS Chapter. **This chapter does not contain lemon at all, but the next one may.** So be forewarned. If you lose faith in me as an author because of this, then clearly you have not read my other horrid slash pairings. All the same, I do hope you enjoy this chapter and the ones that follow.

* * *

Dante and Constantine were not in constant contact with the Angels. It was such a cliche name, now that Constantine thought about it. He had never thought much of the government. They weren't exactly the most original of individuals. But now he wished they were here, just to keep Dante from doing anything that would endanger the few poor humans who had wandered into the Sight. It wasn't always their fault they got mixed up in this supernatural dive. Sometimes they were dragged along against their will, sworn a pact of silence, and made victims in the dark rooms locked away behind shame.

If Dante was planning something violent, they would definitely see something they could not unsee.

Constantine staggered after Dante, twitching his hoodie around his face to keep it hidden. "I just saw Violette again." He saw a dancing black lithe form, taunting him. "She's watching us."

Dante's hands were twitchy but smoothly hiding in his longish sleeves. He wondered if the sleeves were a hindrance when he needed to shoot. Constantine's mind conjured up the loud banging report that seemed to shake the snow from the very pines when he had shot Mr. Fake Priest in the woods. The way Dante seemed to move, looked less like a stalking wolf and more like a jumpy coyote. He wanted to move. Something in him was bursting at the seams for something more intense than covert intelligence gathering.

"I know."

Then Violette was at Constantine's side again. Her eyes, utterly black, took one look at him and she laughed in that horridly adorable sadistic way children can, "If you want me, you'll have to lose the princeling." She tittered, seized Constantine's arm so hard that he cried out - and was numbed to his very core. The pain remained. It stung and burrowed somewhere along the highways of his blood. Something wet and warm dripped down to his fingertips once she had vanished again.

"Dante?" he called, wondering if he should go around calling his name like that in a club where people might know Dante's name. Dante was watching him with a grimace of frustration. Apparently he had seen it happen but Violette the Demon Vixen was too fast, and she had disappeared. Dante flicked his hair out of his eyes when he saw her dash up the spiral stairways, her electric blue hair fanning out around her face with a toss of her head. Constantine rolled up his sleeve. Half of his forearm tattoo was revealed. Dante had seen them before – and the dim remains of scars older than the tattoo. Fresh blood was pooling from little pierce marks that looked more like little kitten teeth marks. All the same - the black nails bit deep and blood was dripping to his fingertips, smearing the design.

Not only that, there was more than Dante's own set of eyes that had taken sudden and rapid interest. A dozen others were staring at them. Dante draped his arm around Constantine's shoulder to quickly muscle his way through the tight knot of limbs suddenly coming together to block them.

"I don't feel good."

Dante tightened his hold around the quaking man's body. Constantine's vision swerved. He heard, somewhere, in the cavernous spaces of his own psychic mind, silver bells. Somewhere Violette had laughed.

"She's... oh shit, she's_ in me_." His feet skidded to a halt on the floor and he crashed to one knee. Tendons and bone protested with a warning crunch. His head spun and bells reverberated, no longer small light bells that made him think of a white, brittle Christmas but of death - a tolling deep, rich and timbrous, and he was wondering if it really was in his mind or part of the damn club's ritualistic music. He knew it had to be real because his ears were aching.

Then Dante snatched up Constantine's infected arm and wrapped his mouth around the bleeding wounds. In Constantine's state of mind, he was clearly shocked and appalled and disgusted at once. Constantine made to punch Dante in the face, but the effort seemed suddenly impossible. Dante was sucking at the wounds, pulling the venom out before it traveled too far. The exorcist's free arm simply flopped over his head and he looked more like encouraging him than driving him away. He was terrified because he felt none of the pain expected from the wounds anymore. The strangeness of it didn't matter. Constantine's eyes were already rolled back, saw nothing at all at first until he was permitted a rare view of Violette's own imaginative thoughts.

That man she had bedded last week and watched him sob and laugh hysterically when he had sheathed himself inside her. Hours later, nearly dead, her paying customer was unconscious in his motel room at last. Another man had taken her upstairs into the bedroom, thinking to sodomize the girl who had romanced him so with her black eyes, only to end up a victim of the same intent to harm as if she had seen it in his mind herself. He saw her among others like her: older, younger, male and female, twisted caricatures of innocence and such deadly beauty. They taught each other the trade: money was the pathway to sin, or something like that.

"Dust. Black dust." He clung onto the image. His eyes squeezed shut like a kid with Asberger's syndrome. "Stop. Stop it. I see something."

Dante spat up another mouthful of venomed blood and grimaced. "I gotta get you out of here."

"I'm not dead yet! Just follow Violette before we lose our chance."

Then, with only a tiny bit of venom flooding him, the pain finally returned - fully and completely without relent. Constantine lurched toward Dante and howled in agony - and by God's grace not loud enough to override the music. Every hair on his body stood straight up and the urge to smoke was as far away as the desire to sleep because rolls of heat swept across his back like a deadly plain's fire. Through the pain, he clung desperately to those people who had already died - and to Jackie, poor Jackie, who was in the grips of some kind of drug possession and no way out but what Dante and Constantine could accomplish.

The one question remained unanswered: what would happen to her if she couldn't get more? Was she immediately hooked, or would she be able to turn away from it? Something about the nature of the drug - demonic - made it clear that the latter was not so likely.

Somehow, in between gasping in between waves, he hissed, "She was selling Shadow Dust and there's a guy with a lot of it up there. Right up there." He rolled out of Dante's way, bumping into another person. A half-angel looked down, alien eyes narrowing in annoyance. Then those same eyes widened as the half-angel's attention flew to Dante and the pistols under his jacket, glimpsed only for a second.

"He's got guns!" the creature screeched, wings unfolding and spreading out in alarm, nearly knocking half of the people around him to the floor.

The Sight came alive with an entirely different pulse of activity. People pushed for the doors and emergency exits. Creatures with wings flew to the ceiling and screamed with fear and fury at the commotion.

Humans, caught in their monstrous webs, stood with mouths gaping, wondering how something as mundane as guns could possibly cause such a ruckus with creatures that should be able to fire laser beams from their eyes. Constantine reached in his hoodie and pulled out a piece of cloth. He cracked a half-smile and used his lighter to light it up. It would definitely light a fire under their asses.

As soon as the cloth was set ablaze, Dante was not actually prepared for the light that erupted and filled the entire room, out-shining the underglow of all the tables. His eyes burned and he winced. But he heard Constantine shouting, "Go up those stairs and get our man now!"

Dante shook off the blindness. The light continued to burn - and those with devil blood suffered. Even Dante got a little hot under the collar. With a final look to Constantine, he took off toward the stairs, blessed by a clear path created by the flock of club-goers trying to get away. However, the club was not without its own guards. Four humans alone stayed behind. They were hired - and pushed their way in front of Dante Sparda as if they had no inkling at all.

Constantine watched him, riveted, holding his breath. _Dear God, is he going to kill them?_

A broken nose and four broken limbs later answered his question. They would not die, but a human's threshold for pain was depressingly low. So as soon as Dante made quick, non-lethal work of them, the way was clear. Constantine's flame died in a few moments. The blinded demons were gone and the half-blooded creatures had long since gone, smelling a battle of which they could not really be apart.

He had felt bad for raining on their parade. If it weren't for the other churchfuls of people that would die because of this drug of the Damned, he would not even be caught dead in this atmosphere. He had no choice here. His life was just as much in danger here as it was anywhere else. At any time, Lucifer himself may just change his mind about when he would take Constantine - and he would rather err on the side of caution than boast a certainty which was no certainty at all.

The exorcist slid his hand into his pant pocket, only daring to risk the small luxury of watching Dante bumrush upstairs. As he saw the last red flash of his coat, two metal glints appeared in both of his hands. It was true, two guns are greater than one. But what would they do against demons?

When Constantine's hand reappeared, he was holding a small silver bell. It was not unlike the kind of bell Dante used to 'practice', calling forth demons from Hell only to send them back with their tails between their legs, unwilling victims in a game where only Dante was the winner. This bell was of a similar maker. The bell rung at a distance caused great pain and discomfort to full-blooded demons, even if they couldn't hear it completely. At closer range, with the proper incantation, it could send them careening through a portalway, directly to Hell - an exorcism directly from the sacred middle ground.

As soon as Hell was redeemed its wayward tenants, Constantine would carefully pick his way upstairs and check on Dante.

He plucked a two-way radio from a belt pocket under his sweatshirt with his other hand (and thanked God that Violette hadn't noticed all the strange hard little bumps all over his body. He clicked it on, and spoke in a harsh voice, fighting the fading but pulsing pain caused by Violette's venom: "Dowerty."

A reply crackled back through. "I was just about ready to shit myself, pardon my language. Suddenly everyone's running out of there. What's going on?"

"They saw Dante's guns and freaked. Hard to believe." He bit his lip through a fresh wave of pain and something else – something that made him sick with shame. He was getting undeniably aroused. It was infuriating.

_Is that how she preys on people? Makes them nuts with lust that they can't get relief, no matter how many times she takes them?_

"Listen to me. Dante's going in to catch a girl, and maybe the guy who might lead us to the real bad guys. I don't want to get my hopes up—" The one-way glass from the second floor exploded at that precise moment, showering Constantine in razor sharp danger. He covered his head just in time, but it was just his luck that pieces of glass cut into his arm and his hand all over. Now he was bleeding even more. The chances that he would not need stitches were extremely slim and this made Constantine a very grumpy boy indeed.

"Constantine?!"

The radio crackled in protest. Constantine looked up. The club was almost completely empty. The bell in his other hand barely made a sound when he kept the little clapper inside from connecting to the bell. Without the proper words, the bell could have the opposite desired effect.

From the dance floor, the room above looked empty and bland. But there was a light fixture swinging in a wild dance that Constantine noticed. There was also a flashing light and the dull booming of gunfire in small space in what was supposed to be sound-proofed rooms. Then three figures came stumbling toward the broken shards of one-way glass still remaining. Two of them jumped – small, doggish forms, screaming. They collided with the taller figure and all of them fell backward out of the glass that had once covered floor-to-ceiling of that room beyond.

The regular illumination came up as soon as the three figures crashed to the floor. The two dog things regained their feet. One of them hadn't lost its vice grip with its fangs on Dante's arm.

Meanwhile, Dante was laying on his back. He was wrestling his gun out of the mouth of the second dog and shouting something that sounded a lot like, "Sit, Fido! Sit!"

Constantine was afraid that if he called for Dante, the dogs would take notice – and come chew him a new asshole.

So he took one look at the creatures that looked like dogs, and presumed them to be demons. Then he raised the little cryptic bell in his hand and gently let the clapper hang free. He chanted something archaic and holy. The air in the room stilled. The mist from the fog machines stopped stirring and the dogs even halved their efforts to tear Dante's hands off, with the guns still clutched in them. The demon dog attached to Dante's left arm let go at the sound of Constantine's voice, raising its bloodied muzzle with a mind-gripping intelligence. Constantine backed away one step.

The demon charged.

Violette was running through the back door on the second floor. There was a fire escape there, but that's not where she wanted to go. She still remembered the horrible way that pretty boy cowboy had looked at her. Like he could see her real face. It had stuck with her for several minutes – terrified her, really. Not a man on this earth had dared look at her and see anything but a beautiful tempting child. He looked at her and saw a disgusting maggot feeding on the rot of human morality.

She ran.

As soon as he had come upstairs after her, she had warned Tobias about his arrival. But he had prepared. He bought them on the demonic Black Market. They were furless, ugly hounds of hell that barely got free of the Fifth Circle unless someone helped. And someone HAD. Someone very powerful had ensured these two pretty puppies would serve Tobias and make sure anyone too curious about the business upstairs would get the answers they deserved.

Judy and William, they were called. For no particular reason other than to keep their identities as secret and innocuous as possible.

So she had taken her leave a split-second before Dante had gone into the room. Tobias opened the gate with the tolling bell and let Judy and William introduce themselves to Dante before a single word had left Dante's mouth. As for Tobias, Violette knew he had his own ways to get away. Whatever evidence left behind was left to her discretion. It was her job to get the evidence gone and away before those snitches got a whiff of it.

_But they wouldn't be here unless they knew what they were looking for already_, she thought. _That John guy was almost suspicious. I should have known._

And then that man had walked over. And looked at her. Scared her in a way she thought no one would could, except the _Big Boss_. And he hadn't had the good mind to grace everyone up here with his wonderful glowing presence in years.

They had already caught the Stranger. He was in prison but by now, someone had been sent to destroy him. He was only human after all, and Shadow Dust was the perfect way to tip the scales of the war in the First Fallen's favor. Probably permenantly.

A sound filled the air just as the demon rose on its hindquarters and sprang. Time slowed for just a split second. William, the lucky winner, got to taste the bell's effects first. Half-way through his trajectory, the demon canine's scream changed in tone altogether. A bullet passed through his glowing left eye, leaving it hanging out by a thread of optical tissue. Dante must have shot him. But it didn't matter because William was going bye-bye and he would not come back for a long, long time.

Attached to his other hand, Judy let go and jerked from left to right, tossing her head and moaning in a freakishly human fashion. Dante shot her, too. She sank to the floor and covered her misshapen ears with both of her ape-like paws as if the sound of the bell caused her pain. Like William, time seemed to slow down and she began to melt away in a grayish smoke.

Constantine silenced his bell at once before William crashed into him. But he felt no elongated canines clamp onto his arms, nor cat-like hind legs ripping open his stomach and spilling his intestines. He flinched all the same, throwing his arms up in a wild attempt to stop three hundred pounds of mangled dog. But it did not come. He lowered his arms and found Dante was already on his feet.

Constantine stared at Dante's hands. There was not a drop of blood on his skin but there were tooth marks all over his coat where he had blocked their bites.

However, he was in bad shape.

"Maybe you should take the sidelines, old man."

"This is my case," he protested. "I'm fine. Just a little glass."

"You're leaking like a fountain," Dante snapped and there was a touch of anger and more than a little concern in his voice. "Thank you for saving me from the dogs."

"I didn't save you from anything. They were demons. I did my job and deported their scabies-covered asses back to where they belonged. And what the hell are you standing there for? Where's Violette?" No sooner had he asked then he was stricken by that sensation again - and again, he saw her thoughts. They were broken, disjointed, and hard to follow. Her venom still flowed in his veins now. It was too late for Dante to do anything about it. But while Violette still lived, he could find her.

"Follow me." He ignored his arm for now. Dante sighed in exasperation and sauntered after him.

"How 'bout I run ahead, and you just let the boys know I'm on her trail?"

"Because I'm the only one who sees where she's going - and it's not an easy place to follow. For you, or me." Constantine tugged his hoodie back so he could see better. The gig was up anyhow. If they knew Constantine was involved here, then the word would spread.

His eyes glittered with fresh visions. He ran as fast as he dared, in spite of all the discomfort. The radio crackled on Dante's end. "Are you two all right in there? We've got people going in through the back entrance to cut off any escape routes. People are actually panicking here and I'm not sure I like this." It was Dowerty again.

"Just make sure no girl with bright blue hair escapes. In fact, don't let ANYTHING get out. She might be a shapeshifter." His eyes narrowed; it was getting clearer as he mindlessly barreled through the underlit back hallways of the club, where secret things went on. Suddenly Violette was spotted coming out of a second building. She looked over her shoulder, her blue hair streaming behind her. Dante pushed Constantine aside, leveling his gun at her.

"Freeze, bitch."

She nearly dropped the box she was carrying, loaded down with God-knows-what. Her body was half-crouched, like a cat cornered, and those terrifying black eyes were wide like a real child's.

"Come quietly and I promise, I'll play just as nice as pie, but you better not run. Something tells me you might not like how I play when I'm NOT as nice as pie." Dante's voice would have sent shivers down a US Marine's back, but to Constantine, he was nearly struck dumb. Dante was talking Business, and when he talked Business, the tone changed and something playful in him was drawn as taut as a bowstring.

Constantine readied the bell. If he had to deport her, he would. But for some reason, he had a feeling he wouldn't need to. Not while Dante was there. His eyes were drawn rather against his will from the alien beauty of Violette to the devil hunter's stern but patient look that was also a mixture of amused annoyance at a household pet ("Oh, look, little Dixie pissed on the carpet again, looks like I'll have to clean it up again!") Thrumming steadily beneath that, something that scared Constantine lurked. Something that hated with so much energy that it never saw an end. Self-consuming and ever burning for all demonkind.

The man was caught staring at Dante. The devil hunter shared a look with him - one of those looks that usually only occured between two undercover cops in a cheesy crime investigation when they discover the suspect trying to pull one over when they discover five kilograms of cocaine hidden in a suitcase under some floorboards behind the toilet of said suspect's home.

Dante advanced. The she-demon screamed at him, her eyes widening and bulging obscenely while the rest of her face stretched like it was just a rubber mask across a complicated skeleton of machinery, mocking everything that looked alive.

But when she threw the box at the floor, Constantine flinched, the tiny cynical voice in him heckled him for his stupidity. The box toppled, crumpled from the dampness compromising its structural integrity. The contents all spilled out in a mad clatter of metal pangs. He saw a pencil sharpener, a tin cup, a pen and paper, paper clips, extremely mundane objects. Sheafs of paper that may prove to be absolutely important or no more useful than something with which to start a nice warm fire.

She pounced on a long, curved blade lost in the glitter of all that metal - just before Dante shot her through her arm. The bullet did not just penetrate through her skin. It seemed to explode on contact, and the scrawny limb that belonged to some little girl simply erupted in a spatter of sand - sand, Constantine realizes, not blood - and her hand, from the middle of her forearm down, flops to the floor and twitches. She screams. The noise of the gunfire report had nearly made Constantine's head explode, or so it felt.

"Where is the dealer?" Constantine snarled. "Where's the guy who supplies the stuff? Did he run already?"

"You killed his babies. He'll be pissed," her throaty voice whispered. No more happy child-like laughter. She writhed on her knees, gripping the unhealthy-looking stump of her arm. He saw nothing like shattered bone or tendons. Nothing but sand kept pouring and pouring from the fleshy skin that hung around the stump like bits of cloth.

"I don't give a shit!" Constantine snarled, light-headed all of a sudden. "I want to know where the fuck the man is! If you can't tell us that, then you can kiss your vacation on Earth goodbye!" He uttered a harsh phrase that still sounded oddly beautiful. He raised the bell. It barely tinkled but she threw herself down onto the floor as if being squashed by an immense and powerful weight.

It was torture. This was not the same bell that had undone the late William and Judy. This was an unpleasant and altogether inhumane method of interrogating demons. He only used it when he encountered the very, very rare instance of a demon walking around on its own, without the aid of a human to marionette like a freakish flesh puppet.

Violette screeched. "Stop! Stop it!!"

"Sister, I've got all day." There was a steady, healthy dose of adrenaline flowing through Constantine now; it was caused by the guilty pleasure he derived when he had a demon at his mercy. The illusion of power was an intoxicating turn-on. The supernatural would be always haunting him, but with these small victories, he was almost sure that for awhile, the forces that ruled the world wouldn't be fucking with Constantine, no sirree, not any longer. He was the Boss. He could get what he wanted, and there was nothing to stand in his way.

The little bell tingled out again.

Beside him, Dante was rigid. Was the bell painful for him just as it was for Violette? Or did it only hurt half as badly? How badly? He suddenly felt a dampening on his sense of accomplishment that was like a kick in the balls. Not even Violette's high-pitched whine and screeches like that of a wounded owl made him feel better.

Then she rolled her eyes back - he assumed, since pretty much her entire eyeball must have been black. He couldn't tell but for the pained straining of her body, unable to articulate her agony in any other way than writhing like a spider skewered through its abdomen. That's what she is, he thought. A fucking spider, a Black Widow skewered and in so much fucking pain she can't put it into words, but she won't die. Not ever.

Not until John decided she needed to die.

"TOBIAS!" she howled suddenly, rolling onto her belly and twitching spastically. All her prettiness was gone now. The spider analogy suited her just fine. She left greasy yellow streaks of venom on the floor where she clawed it. "Tobias! His name i-is Tobias!"

Dante said, "Where is Tobias?" There was not a trace of discomfort in his tone.

The she-devil whined.

Constantine rang the little bell.

She threw herself onto her back with a fresh stream of pained utterances. Apparently she had no more energy for yelling.

"He took a helicopter to another place, along with whatever Shadow Dust he had. Boxes and boxes of it. You'll never find it, you'll never figure out where he hid it all!"

"Isn't that why you're going to tell me?" Constantine made to ring the bell again - but Dante suddenly reached beside him, closed his hand over his and said,

"That's enough."

Constantine's entire body seemed to do a little double-take. He first tried to twitch his hand out of the other's grasp. Then, disbelieving, he tried again. But Constantine's hand was caught in an iron grip. His knuckles felt like they wanted to pop. He stared at Dante's hardened profile, sculpted out of pure determination.

There was a whole new look in Dante's eyes. A mixture of regret and... pity? "That's enough," he repeated more softly. "We'll take this one with us and interrogate her more. Tobias is long gone. Any body worth a grain of salt will have run already in the confusion."

Constantine wanted to snap angrily, _Well, gee, Sherlock, isn't that _your _fault for causing said ruckus?_

Instead he said, "Don't you dare feel sorry for her. Isn't that what you said to me not too long ago? We need to find this shit out _now_. How do we know a dozen more people aren't burning in Hell because they had been conned into this? People could have been killed by SD tonight, in this very goddamn club and we just haven't found out."

The demoness shivered on the floor. Dante let go of his hand, but reluctantly - and only to pull the second fire arm from its holster behind his back. It made a slippery, delicious kind of noise that somehow made Constantine hungry for something greasy.

"Look, sister," Dante said without kindness. "You've got very limited options here. You can answer our questions and get a painless ticket back to Hell without all of this fuss. Or you can sit and squirm for a few more minutes. Hours. Days." He smiled like a butcher knife. "Your choice."

Constantine silenced the clapper on the bell but he brandished it at her, to demonstrate his point.

The she-devil was at odds. She wanted to obey some master they didn't know yet - maybe Tobias himself. At the same time, she did not want to suffer any longer. Demons sweltered in Hell because that's where they were made - born - somehow. They were not pulled screaming into the world by any human means. So they were not exactly tormented by anything except the desire to be free... and to taste of whatever sin they preferred, without being confined to Hell where victims quickly lost their flavor.

"Son of Sparda," she spat, "I will answer. But only this comforts me. My venom is inside that young fool. He's condemned as it is. So long as it remains in him, he'll suffer... just as I've made all those pathetic horny bastards suffer. Nothing will make me happier than knowing he's just as screwed as I am once I leave this world."

Constantine was tickled in the back of his mind - something screamed worry - but it was like hearing someone shouting down a long, long hall and your head was already inside a thick box.

"He's fled to the hideout. It's close-by, but hidden. Only we demons know to get inside. I'll let you know how to get in there, don't worry." Her eyes closed shut, and an exhausted kind of sigh escaped her contorted body. "I don't think you'll be disappointed... Son of Sparda and John Constantine."


	7. Chapter 7

**Born to Bleed, Chapter 7**

Constantine breathed a deep sigh of relief just as soon as he could get into the motel room. With the information checked against the locations in LA, Constantine deported Violette. She had gone with barely a struggle, just smiling away at John as though he was about to be sent on a trip to Disney Land and he was the last person to know about it.

When Dante had clamped his hand on his fist in the club when he wanted to ring the bell and send that miniature demon whore into fits, he still felt the weird restlessness in his knuckles no matter how he tried to crack them. The contact of Dante's skin seemed alien to him, as alien as the time Dante had saved him from the frozen water and tugged off his sopping wet, frozen clothing that would have killed him with hypothermia.

Dante found John in the motel room after a debriefing that left Constantine itching for a smoke. The exorcist was licking his wounds with a cigarette smoking furiously from the between the man's lips. Dante often looked at the man John Constantine and thought, _He has the potential to be good-looking_. No. Dante thought he already was. The half-demon stood in the living room, hands propped on his hips, watching Constantine bent over the bathroom sink, shirtless, with a bottle of peroxide balanced on the edge of the white porcelaine while he worked at his cuts with a gauze clutched in his trembling opposite hand. It was to be his great fortune that the majority of the deeper glass lacerations were focused on the same arm that showed the mark Violette had left on him. It meant he only had to worry about being klutzy with that arm instead of babying both.

The exorcist was working with furtive breathless intensity. His eyes would have caught Dante's glowing reflection in the mirror if he had bothered to look. The smoke filled the bathroom. Constantine hissed every so often with pain.

The devil hunter lurked a little closer, leaning in the doorway. He knocked lightly to announce his presence. "Need an extra hand?"

John went pasty white and jerked slightly. "Fuck," he announced. "It's just you."

"Sorry to disappoint. So?"

John dabbed at the biggest cut with a dark look shadowing his face. "I might."

A ripple of gooseflesh flowed over Constantine's thin back. He was not very muscular, Dante noticed, but lean - probably from lack of eating anything with substance to put on his bones, having just enough physical activity to get him to lose whatever fat crept onto his frame. His skin was smooth and very pale. He probably hadn't gotten much sunlight as a teenager. His eyes calmly observed the steady, minute flow of the muscles across Constantine's back as he worked, the movement of his shoulder blades.

"You're beautiful," Dante noted aloud without an ounce of forethought. Much of what came out of his mouth was on a whim anyway. He said this phrase now to see exactly how John would react.

Constantine suddenly leaned heavily on the sink, then turned his head and peered at Dante suspiciously through the messy fringe of his black hair as though suddenly remembering he was there. He didn't just peer. He pretty much shot laser beams.

"Listen. I don't know what you're playin' at, but I've had about as much bullshit from demons wanting to put various objects into my various orifices for one life. I'd rather not be hit on right now."

Dante did not wince. He did not even frown. His grin spread across his face, as sure as the sun rises. "I'm just saying. I don't think it was a mistake that Violette picked you. You're not too bad looking." His eyes turned smoky. Sleepy. The curious lion seemed to have returned for just that moment. "And I'm really glad about things turned out today."

"I think we got a good lead." John ignored Dante the curious lion, breathing a bit shallower. He lifted his arm for his own examination. Then he turned to Dante, a roll of gauze in one hand and medical tape in the other. "I wish I didn't have to take time to rest. I'm gonna pass out." Dante stepped into the close space. Unlike John, Dante had come away without a single scratch. His hands were not even scarred by the demon dog's teeth.

John flicked the ashes into the sink. Dante's smooth motion went unnoticed until the exorcist's cigarette was once again skillfully snatched right out of his hand. The damned white-haired pretty boy flicked it into the toilet without even looking.

John snarled, "If you're going to take my cigarettes, then you better start offering me something better. Those are my breakfast, lunch, and dinner."

Before he could even speak further on this recurring problem, he was pressed into the sink by Dante. In fact, he would have said that he was pressed into the sink by Dante's hips, as if he wanted to puncture him with the damnably obvious erection pushing on his jeans (something he had noticed quite some time ago, which explained why he refused to bother looking at Dante at all).

John's lacerated arm stung. Dante buried his inhibitions just for the moment and grabbed the other firmly by the chin so John, caught and cornered and irrevocably captivated by this suddenly possessive turn of events.

The glittering blueness of both of those eyes of Dante's consumed John's field of vision. He felt a set of lips on his, moving, and this is what they said:

"I think I have something better to put in your mouth."

John's ears began to burn. They were on fire and they would not stop ringing. "D....Dante." Then he pulled back as far as his neck would allow, as far as Dante would let him go, trying to escape his words. Got to get away from those unbelievable blue eyes. "_What?_"A nervous, almost boyish laugh. "You're... You're crazy. You are absolutely... crazy."

"What's wrong?" Dante said in a manner that sounded wounded, but John would not put money down on it. "I'm just saying. You should try something else. I have candy."

"Oh. You have some candy." John didn't like that. Not at all. "Now you sound like a pedophile. Here, little boy, get into my van. I have some candy." Not only that, Dante was reaching to put the gauze on now. So he had a legitimate reason to be this close. He wasn't pushing against him as hard. But he was badly, horribly deliciously rattled.

"It's good if you want to quit," Dante explained. "Oral fixations and all. Might be part of your little problem."

"I don't have a problem," John breathed. "I've heard this spiel before. I can quit whenever I feel like, but considering my condition, I don't feel like it's necessary. One way or the other, I'm going to die. I may as well char my lungs up before my special trip down under." _His mouth_, he thought, _was just on my mouth. He was practically sucking on my lip. And I'm not even going to talk about it. Just going to pretend it didn't happen. Pretend I didn't like it._

_Pretend I don't want him to do it again._

Dante stuck the gauze on with the tape. His dexterous hands worked without stalling. Now he was good and focused on what he was doing, standing a respectable distance from the other male. "I just think it would be so much better to spend the rest of your known existence doing something that won't make your happy stay more enjoyable. Like taking up kayaking. Or sky-diving. Something that could potentially kill you - but may be a hell of a lot more fun than coughing up wads of phlegm every morning. Something that thrills you and fills you at least with some kind of feeling other than-" He stopped. Met John's gaze just for a second. He smiled apologetically.

John stared at him. In a dangerously dark tone, he whispered, "You have no idea how I feel."

"Then tell me."

"Why should I?" John scoffed furiously. "Why should I tell you anything? You're just a partner. Just working with me. I'll be glad to get this done and be as far away from you as possible."

"Because I want to make it better. So you work more efficiently." Even to Dante, it sounded a little thin. He pressed onward. "I want to make it better because if you don't, you'll be... miserable. And that... sucks, for lack of a better word." He grinned at him, a boyish infectious smile that somehow John never caught. "I dunno. I consider it my duty. You're a human. Even if you won't die on my watch - as far as I know - other people will. That may cost a life other than your own. Do you want to walk around all banged to shit, useless to everyone, because you just stopped caring? When people who don't even know you who need your help are going to suffer?"

He slid his hand over his bicep. There were no cuts on there. Then he pulled him closer again, his lips at his ear, purring, "Sometimes you should stop worrying and take the goddamn candy."

The devil hunter boy was beautiful. _No._ The half-demon was absolutely gorgeous. Constantine's arm seemed a concern from another galaxy - a comet that would hit in a thousand years. Out of his lifetime. And just a few seconds from now, he might just take that offer. He might be that stupid kid who got into the van with the bastard pedophile. And then he might kick him in the balls and run off with the candy, laughing all the way home. But right then, he was alone. He wasn't in a room full of people and supernatural beings, watching every move he made.

"You smell amazing," John whispered breathily. He brushed the tip of his nose against an exposed piece of the half-demon's soft, human neck. Not brimstone. Just men's cologne and human sweat. So subtle, but it had him straining toward his next breath to get it again and again. His mouth watered. "I don't know how this is going to work out."

The answer came almost immediately.

"I'll take care of you, John."

Someone else's arm wrapped around his lower back. Very slow, steady, not forceful. Strong, though. John turned his face toward his neck now, letting his cut arm hang down at his side, the other draping around Dante's hip. A persistent ache was stirring between his legs, growing more acute as he awakened to something he couldn't believe he wanted.

"It's okay. Relax."

John tipped his head back, brushing his parted, hungry lips against Dante's again, confused but determined to stop this right here, right _now_ - before it got too far. It was already too far now. With a sudden roughness, he struggled out of Dante's embrace – which let him go just as quickly and easily as it had closed around him – and glared from the bathroom doorway breathlessly, the bedroom behind him.

"Don't you ever, ever take of advantage of me. I'll fucking find a way to deport you so fast you won't know which end is your ass before something down there fucks it with a pitch fork." He huffed hard, then whirled around, snatched his regular coat from the back of his chair and stormed out onto the balcony, where it had already started to drizzle miserably. A cigarette was soon and rapidly emitting its usual noxious fumes into the LA sky.

He heard the sound of the flat door opening and closing. He tried not to look down to watch the sidewalk for a white-headed half-demon. He waited a whole hour for his heart to stop pounding.

* * *

Tobias unclenched his shoulders only after he had passed through the safe house's sealed doors. The demonic energy practically poured from the walls in here, but those seals prevented anyone with even a marginal amount of psychic to detect it when they passed the completely innocuous car dealership's garage doors which were permanently closed. No one was permitted to enter unless they were of Demon blood – and bore the First's Mark. It was branded into every one of Tobias's drones.

Here, beyond the first doorway where there should have been beautiful wonders of human ingenuity designed to zip people from point A to point B on wheels and gas propelled engines, there instead were massive wrought-iron safes that stood eleven feet tall, four feet wide and long, and beautiful words inscribed on their surfaces.

Violette was another concern. She had not come back. It was just another crack in the grand scheme of Shadow Dust. It was another mistake he could not afford to make. The First would not be pleased, because those two investigators had come far too close this time. They had the spirit to actually walk straight into the Sight and come challenging him with guns blazing! It was unthinkable. Only a human would be so completely brazen.

But that white-haired character, the presence of whom felt so very familiar, did not sit well with him. Not at all. Tobias stood among the metal containers, feeling the power pulsing from them. It was here it had begun, but it would not end here.

He turned to the figures looming in the shadows of the abandoned car garage, hooded in black, their stillness statuesque and full of unspoken potential.

"Guard this place with your lives. Keep them at bay. And if you see this man," Tobias whispered fiercely, showing them in one of his memories. It was not hard; their unseeing eye felt like an oily tentacle groping at his thoughts, seizing the image of Dante Sparda and keeping it as their own, "give him the usual treatment like his kind deserves."

* * *

Dante walked the streets of LA, an unfamiliar stomping ground but something of an adventure for the white-haired devil hunter. It was a beautiful day by John's standards, but it was miserable and chill for a hot-blooded male whose blood was still up - in more ways than one. So he was out for a cold walk, his head down, staring at the sidewalk and ignoring any look that came his way. So be it. Anyone seeing a man with a giant sword strapped to his back found the quickest route to get as far away from him as possible.

The very buildings stank of demons. This was such a hotspot of activity. He brushed shoulders with a half-angel, his skin prickled, the nape of his neck broke out in goosebumps. He felt *alive* out here. He felt as if every pore were drinking in the energy of Los Angeles. It was beautiful. It was heartpounding. Soon, as he ducked into alleys and through streets, he was well and lost and drunk on the alien forces at work all around him.

And above all, he could taste John Constantine everywhere on the air. John Constantine made his name here. He had lived in many places, but he could feel him everywhere - or sense the influences that shaped him.

Did he eat this very same Chow Mein at this noodle shop? Did he buy his groceries at this corner? Did walk in the park?

He smelled his brand of cigarettes almost everywhere. His nostrils flared and he stopped to breathe, pounding heart, his aura rippling with power. John Constantine was everywhere in this goddamn city no matter how far Dante walked.

What the hell is wrong with me? he thought, leaning in the doorway of a strip joint without really paying attention to where he was. It was as if he couldn't stop thinking or feeling or breathing the human. He remembered people that came into his life and left just as quickly - one night stands, hard crushing passionate moments that left most people brokenhearted and Dante left with a guilty buzz.

He needed to get this job done and get home and bury his senses somewhere underneath a thick fog of alcohol and woman. It would clear his head.

A higher-pitched voice giggled inside the building to his left. He saw the gleaming buffet of skin beyond the door he was standing in and turned away, huffing in annoyance. Humans smelled of their own decay - especially Constantine. The man was no exception. Then there was the cloying aroma of Hell's mark, a thick sugar-sweet burning smell.

His heart shuddered in his chest again as he stepped into the strip club at last and began to surf for information. He could smell something else in here. Shadow Dust seeped through the layers of perfume, cologne, and decay. He shoved his hands deeply into his coat pockets and was submerged in a hot, stuffy, oversexed room full of males and stripping women. He wondered if this place was connected to the Sight, and in the very high likelihood that it was, if anyone here was predisposed to notice him and cause a ruckus.

Well, good. He needed at least a half-way decent work out. His muscles were tangled in a soup of unhappy chemicals and sexual frustration. A good bout of physical activity - mostly involving someone else's face coming into contact with his fist at high velocity - would do him a good turn.

However, it seemed he could slide through the crowd like a shark, his hooded face framed and curtained by his unusual white hair.

He was almost to the pole dancing beauties trying to make some quick and easy money, baring all for the hungry eyes in the room. Cigars burned everywhere, and once again, a certain fragrance passed under his nose and reminded him jarringly of John.

And he was keenly aware of another man seated in a booth near the left hand side of the room. He was cornered, shadowed, and giving Dante such a stink eye that the half-demon had no choice but to walk closer, making a show of ordering something to drink. His lips were curved into a grin, a natural flirt with the waitress who brought him a little basket of hot wings and ranch dipping sauce.

He sucked the meat off the bones in one noiseless sucking motion. His eyes were locked to the man in the suit seated at the booth. He was slightly darker-skinned, perhaps Eastern Asian, but something about the sweeping arching eyebrows and thick lashes and deep, almost-black eyes, spoke that he might even be as specific as Egyptian - beautiful people, no matter the gender. His scalp was completely shaven, revealing an intricate tribal tattoo that began at the back of his neck that snuck underneath his clothing and was not visible right away until Dante saw him turn his head to order a second drink from the waitress doing her usual rounds.

The suit was cut close and accentutated a lithe, athletic form, and the legs were crossed beneath the glossy plastic tabletop, a shiny blue drink glowing between his well-shaped, long-fingered hands. His manicured nails were ebony and did not reflect the light.

"Vampire," Dante's lips whispered.

The Egyptian man looked straight at Dante with sudden intensity. His eyes burned in their sockets, though his face was relaxed and openly friendly.

Hot wings in one hand and dipping sauce in the other, he sauntered to the table and dropped them in front of the vampire, whose eyes took in the offering with a cursory glance.

"I know you."

"Must have the wrong guy." Dante grinned easily. "What makes you think you know me?"

"You have a distinctive reputation." When Dante failed to respond to that, the vampire turned and folded his hands patiently over the top of his drink. "You are the devil hunter, Dante Sparda. And you came here to get information about Shadow Dust."

"Damn. This was a hell of a lot easier than I thought!" Dante sat down, sprawled on what was left of the booth's seating, and smiled at the vampire. "Are you gonna tell me what I need to know? Like maybe where the stuff is being produced in large quantities and even how to get in there?"

"I'm not interested in helping you. I'm merely observing your presence here as an unfortunate scratch on an otherwise flawless evening. I have no interest in being associated with your kind." His voice, cultured and deeply buttery, rubbed over Dante's ears.

He purred, "Well, maybe I have something that can ease the transition a little better." He nudged the man beneath the table against the hip with Ebony, the gun hot, heavy, and hard in his hand. "I don't want to ruin your evening, Mr. Bloodsucker, but I've kinda got no room for argument. This is life or death. Many valuable human lives are being lost every day because of this stuff. You at least know of it - so it's a concern for you, too, isn't it? Humans are the bread and butter to you vamps, so this is probably a little troubling. In fact... wouldn't you say it's almost as if you might end up starving to death if this becomes a real global issue?"

If Dante's words changed his mind or the gun had, it was hard to say. The vampire looked mildly put out. He stared at Dante with his finely detailed brows somewhat knitted together before he relaxed slowly. His black nails tapped on the tabletop with a fierce clicking.

"So you're not just a stupid oaf bullying your way through information. You've a nack for reading too much into things. Why don't you be quiet and listen to what I tell you, since you are correct in presuming that it's not just human lives that are involved in this."

This guy wasn't like other vampires Dante ran into. Most of the bloodsuckers back home, the few that he allowed to surf the streets for easy non-lethal meals, simply hid and minded their own business, and when they started trouble, vampires took care of the ripple-causer and silenced him good. They had a good deal with the hunters in his neighborhood; don't kill anyone, don't make any more of your kind than necessary. The second part was easier, since it took a very old vampire to accomplish such a thing and most of the young ones took off to other parts of the world to seek enlightenment.

Dante liked his vampire neighbors back home. Some of them were so zen, it was easy to hang out with them and not just relax. Or maybe it was just their natural prey-soothing auras that had that effect.

This guy... This vampire looked like he had a good wad stuck up his ass. His voice was buttery but emotionless, but every word sounded like poetry all the same. Dante hated vampires sometimes.

"Tell you what. I'll listen to your little story, if you promise to keep this little rendezvous between you and me, capische?"

"Agreed. I'd rather not be known to gallivant strip clubs with a disreputable idiot like yourself."

Dante sighed over-dramatically. "Get on with it."

"Shadow Dust is endangering my people," the vampire said. His eyes grew soft and faraway. "It has existed before, but only to be used in small amounts against a demon worshipper's enemies. Occult fools used it at their own peril. But now it's a weapon and it is putting others who have a vested interest in mankind's survival, as it were, at risk. So it is only my own sense of preservation that I'm helping you, demon slayer."

"I'm touched by your _humanity_. Go on."

The vampire sighed slowly. His breath had an unpleasant odor. "So I've discovered a little of what you need to know. There are places where this stuff is passed around in large quantities. The black powder is stored in most mischievious places, but to kill the cobra, you must strike for its head. I only know that private investors transport it and hide it in unlikely places, such as launderettes, restaurants, clubs like the place you exploded onto. These means of transport are marked." He pricked his finger and pulled a napkin from the dispenser on the table, eyes narrowing as he drew the symbol. It was the sign of Aries.

"There. Was that so hard?" Dante pocketed the grisly note, even though he could have memorized it all the same. The blood from the vampire could be useful later. "I'm not going to insult you by asking for your name. I'm just glad you were so cooperative. I'm almost convinced you want something in return."

"Simply leave me alone. I won't harm anyone this night or the next, knowing you're in town. You've such a tender delicate _juicy_ spot for humans, for someone who claims such a lineage, boy." A shark-like wintry smile filled that beautiful face, making him appear so dastardly it made Dante want to laugh out loud.

"All right. Good vamp. I'll be back here, if you have anything more for me. Same deal as before."

"Wait." The vampire's smile faded. "A compensation for robbing me of my meal tonight. It is only polite."

Dante was in the act of getting up, but he slowly sat down. His eyes glittered oceanic blue. He tilted his head. "Oh yeah? Sorry to hear that. Nothing I can do about it."

"I know you have means to track me through the city. With my blood, you can do even more. So I would ask an equal exchange. It will be a trifle, compared to what you can endure. Will you not defer?"

Dante ran both hands through his hair and eased out a husky, nervous laugh. "If you say so." He dropped his hand onto the table, palm up, and glared at the dancers without looking. But he was watching the vampire all the same. _Careful_, he thought. _His bite can make even a half-demon forget himself_.

The vampire picked up Dante's hand with a touch like chill air made solid. He turned his wrist toward him and brought it to his lips, breathing delicately through the nose as if scenting a particularly rare and palatable wine. His lips closed over a piece of skin, and an instant later Dante's hand was back on the table and the vampire was serenely touching a second napkin to his lips.

"Interesting," he murmured softly.

Dante shook of a slight daze. "I'll say. That was almost disappointing. But better, since I've got things to do and people to see." He stood up and walked away, rubbing his wrist. There wasn't even a mark on his skin, but that was okay. If he was human and there was a bite on his skin, Constantine might act like he'd come home with a necklace of hickeys or something.

Suddenly he was thinking about John again. His eyes narrowed and he stepped outside, blasted by a cleansing breath of polluted city air. It was amazing what a bracing vampire nibble can do for a person. He shuffled his way back to John Constantine's flat, taking the shortest path possible. He knew this information would be good to have, especially if there were buildings and places around here being used for holding large quantities of Shadow Dust.

By the time he was inside and warm, he was almost winded. But not very much, because he discovered John was not alone. Two Angels stood outside the door. The demonic deporting agent was talking with Jackie-Jacquelyn, the girl with the deadly addiction. She was seated in front of Constantine alone in the middle of the room while Constantine crouched in front of her, balanced on the balls of his feet and staring into her face while she gaped back at him, her skin steaming as if she had just endured a scorching hot bath.

"Don't worry," John said without looking at him. "Having some quality time with Jackie."

"I'm okay now," she murmured, folding her hands together until the knuckles were neurotic white. She looked at Dante with fear in her wide pretty eyes. Women either wanted him without a shadow of a doubt or feared him like a prey animal. "C-Can I go back now?"

"Yes, honey, you can go back now. But you'll have to wear the handcuffs and all that before you go outside, understand?"

She tore her eyes away from John when he waved his hand in front of her eyes. Then she gusted a huge, exhausted sigh and stood up shakily. Dante came forward as if to offer his help, but she flinched away and hissed, her eyes melting to black.

"Keep him away," she snarled furiously. "I don't want that abomination anywhere near me."

The half-demon stopped, felt his lip curl. But then it transformed into an easy sultry smile. "Whatever you want, sweetheart."

As soon as she was secured, the Angels came to the door and escorted her back downstairs and into the car that would take her to the jail cell where she had been held for the past few days. The male looked nonplussed as the trussed up college student hobbled down the hall with the two muscular humans guiding her along.

John brushed passed Dante, muttering, "Let's follow them."

Outside, it was dark. To make sure Jackie wasn't going to ditch her shackles and make a run for it to get her next fix, the two paranormal investigators tailed them until she was in the back of the heavily armored vehicle. It must have confused onlookers to see an innocent looking college age woman being so guarded.

Vascoe was standing outside the front passenger door, nodding at Dante. "We were coming back with our dinner, so you didn't see us."

"I don't know about John, but I went for a walk. You'll never guess what I ran into." Dante's eyes sparkled with mischief. He loved witholding information just to be a prick. But he was too excited to play the game for long. "So a vampire walks into a strip joint... and then I come in and sit down and we've got a few drinks in us. Then we get to talking... and he says that he knows that the vehicles that transport big quantities of SD are marked with the symbol of Aries." He didn't mention the blood exchange. For some reason, he couldn't really see John OR the Angels taking that very well.

He produced the napkin with the brown vampire blood illustrating the ram.

"Shit. I'm not exactly thrilled to hear that. Did he happen to say where the symbol is located?"

"No." The napkin hummed in John's hand. It seemed full of that energy of the supernatural - a thing of Power. "But I can sense it now that I know what it is. This city is full of weird energy. But he knows what it feels like, the kind of flavor of crazy the Ram is filled with. No way will I miss a chance like this."

The exorcist glared at Vascoe. "Whatever 'sensitive' people you have, key them to this. Make them look long and hard at every back alley truck they see idling or suspicious transportation activity going on. Unregistered may not mean Shadow Dust is involved. Do it."


	8. Chapter 8

Born to Bleed

Chapter 8

-----

The night air opened up a whole new array of scents to Dante. He was walking beside John, the pair alone to resume their streetside investigation. John was fingering the little piece of napkin with the symbol of the horned beast, Aries. His eyes were searching the crowds, but his thoughts directed inward. He liked to think he walked as though he knew where he was going. The half-demon's presence grated on his nerves, proving too great a distraction to avoid a giant puddle that soaked his left shoe and sock for the entire trip. He would much rather put the bastard on the next plane back to Boston and never see his face again.

As long as he was focused on walking, Dante being near him was tolerable. He could think about other things, like where he was about to find his next lead. It would be in this part of town... here. People walked about them in their nightly lives, people who worked the night shift, sleepless movers and shakers. Night owls like John. Predators and prey sharing the same environment of car exhaust, piss, cigarette smoke, booze, hash. A cigarette dangle from his lips and burned away, leaving an ethereal blue ribbon behind him as he walked.

He reached his mind out... and again, like always, began to feel the creeping sickly sweetness of a touch against his thoughts. A coating of another's psychic energy. It was Violette's lingering influence. He was troubled because he had no idea what it would do to him. It was troubling because Dante Sparda had gone away somewhere and got this information without John even knowing about it.

"Did he even tell you his name?" John muttered darkly, bringing the napkin to his nose. Sniffing it, again, as if he had the same senses Dante had. All he smelled was hot wings and ranch dipping sauce, strangely enough. The blood had a very faint coppery tinge. He was still no demon, even if once in awhile, he felt the tickling itchy sensation in his arm where that little demon bitch had clawed him.

"No. But he was pretty unforgettable. I could show him to you in a crowd easily." There was a note of admiration John could done without hearing in that reply.

The pavement echoed from their shoes. Dante could have been silent if he wanted to, but he made just as much noise as any other human. His coat jingled. His sword swung a bit from his shoulder from side to side, clanking a little. The rig where both Ebony and Ivory hung was now joined by a shotgun, hanging in plain sight. The Feds had gotten him licenses to carry all of these now that the investigation was accelerating. Even John had a gun holstered to his hip, as well as his usual inventory of herbs, religious items, Dragonfire.

"I've known vampires lived here for a long time." John crossed the street, stepping underneath a store awning, flicking ashes onto the sidewalk, nearly onto someone's shoe as they sat, trying to enjoy some hot cocoa. "Just didn't get involved since they're not exactly in my line of work. I just find demons and deport them. If a vampire happens to be dealing with demons, that's another story." If vampires are dealing with demons, then that would be an entirely different problem - one that I'm not all that well equipped to deal with.

"You should get to know them. They're pretty accomodating if you get on their good side - though they aren't known for their warm and fuzzy feelings."

"And if I'm not privy to warm and fuzzy feelings?" His eyes flew up to catch Dante's glance and he grimaced at him. "I'm not usually on anyone's good side. So that's not exactly a relevant point."

"Jeez. Maybe it's just you."

John tried to sheathe the claws, but they were still out and he was pissed that he even still spoke to Dante. If he brought it up, he would probably see how flammable Dante could be against Dragonfire. Glowering at the sidewalk, he pulled on the cigarette. Dante, out of the corner of his eye, shoved his hands into his pockets, a giant guitar case hanging from his back. Cowboy rockstar Dante was on the hunt; his guns were holstered, cold but hungry steel aching to explode upon the dredges of the hellish world that lived just beside this one.

If John concentrated hard enough, he could slip between atoms and see that world. If he tried a bit harder, he could enter it. It wouldn't be hard. Maybe it would make his investigation easier.

"So what did you learn from our college girl?" Alive with curiosity, the half-demon stopped and leaned against a dirty spray-painted wall beside a rusted heavy door, bolted twice. When he had walked in, John and the college girl had appeared to be just coming out of a deep dive from Hell. The smell of it had practically perforated the entire room, all the way into the hallway.

John coughed into a handkerchief for a moment before he answered caustically, "She's definitely been tainted by the stuff. It's in her, and it won't let go. So I was real patient. Asked her what she knew. In a few minutes, it was easy to figure out that she takes little trips into Hell all the time and she can't control it. Every time, she says someone speaks to her, promises to make things all better. That soon, everyone'll be free. Something like that." His eyes scoured the night sky, but saw no stars through the city haze. "The kind of bullshit promises all demons make."

_"I'll take care of you, John." He buried his nose in his neck, felt a human pulse dance beneath his lips. A short little intake of breath. "It's okay... Relax..."_

After so many deals made with demons through the years, John knew better. He _should_ have known better. He shook off the fuzzy heat of memory and continued, "And when she comes out, a little piece of her is gone each time. If she had access to more Shadow Dust, you can bet her soul would be in Hell forever right now." And instead of visions of Dante pressing John against the bathroom sink, his mind was slammed with the vision of people looking mournfully from broken windows, then stepping forward and falling, falling, beyond sight, through the hazy fires of Hell and into an endless purgatory of pain and unremittant emptiness.

"This stuff sounds more fun the more I learn about it."

"Is that all you think about?" John scoffed, coughing once more. He stamped on the cigarette butt. Just above them, a dull street lamp flickered. Then the industrial light bulb popped and went out with an electrical gutter. John's shoulders went rigid. He pulled open his coat; Dante reached for his guitar case while John fingered an inside jacket pocket. His lighter flickered, casting a weak flame against the sudden darkness.

All down the street, street lights went out. This time, there was no symbol of safety, no church haven to retreat to. It was all too soon pitch black. And not even the stars shown through this kind of darkness. A wet, slimy chill poured down the street like a cloud of poisonous fog. The hairs all along the back of John's neck stood up, chills that were not altogether unpleasant racing down his back. An unbidden smile twisted his features into a semblance of a grin. He was pretty well prepared this time. It was the flavor of Hell here that was different from the unfamiliarity of the Northeast. Something he knew well, like an old friend - or a welcome challenge.

"Are you ready?" The exorcist addressed all present, seen and unseen. His hand produced the long, cross-shaped gun he had used in countless battles. The ammunition might not outlast the battle, as it was rare and only used in emergencies. In one hand he clutched a rosary and he wrapped it around the barrel of the holy gun. In his lifetime, he had not deported a single demon with this gun. It had saved his ass a handful of times when demons had a chokehold on enough power to bring them through to Earth, the sought-after middle ground in this supernatural war being waged since the dawn of time. In this situation, he was glad he had taken the time to put it together before speaking to Jackie in case she brought back a friend from their day-trip into Hell.

In hindsight, it was probably better that he let Dante take on this fight. The idea of letting him take all the glory pissed him off. Or maybe the thought that he would have to be saved (again) during a job that was meant to be his had forced him to take extreme measures. It was better to be safe than sorry in any case. The Angels had been nice enough to give Dante and John both two emergency buttons. Once they were depressed, the buttons would sent a signal that would lead the Angels to their location in order to render assistance as soon as the situation was figured out.

In the few moments when he fumbled to prepare his weapons, Dante had calmly stepped out into the middle of the mysteriously empty street. Something was coming up the street on the wrong side, at high speeds. The tires squeeled with a bizarre screaming. Then, squinting, John realized it wasn't a car but some shapeless black *thing*; it was unlike most of the demons he had dealt with before. His eyes slowly focused on it, and when it came to a halt, it hovere for a moment, before the voluminous robes resolved themselves into a Death figure. A mean-looking scythe swung forward, narrowly missing Dante's nose. The sword Rebellion hung heavy but confidently in the half-demon's grasp.

"You again? When are you gonna realize that you can't warn me off this case?"

"Little maggot," the Death said, its voice a disembodied chorus of melancholy moaning and screams of rage. When it used the human language, it still made John's insides turn into mush. It pointed the scythe at the exorcist. "You're meddling comes to an end..." Then it lifted the scythe, drawing John's attention above him - and there, from the darkness beyond his human sight, more figures dropped. They swayed and moved like serpents on spindly naked legs, eyeless skulls snapping open and shut with rotting teeth.

John staggered back down the sidewalk. His gun belched flame as soon as he pulled the trigger. There was a shrill shriek, then an explosion of blue flame as Dragonfire poured from the second nozzle attached to the holy weapon. The group of five demons screamed in response. Dragonfire was a last-resort, but he was out-numbered. And Dante was preoccupied by the Death demon rolling from the left, then the right, disappearing in a miasma of black smoke, only to come at him from a completely different angle.

The demons wandered around, batting helplessly at the flames, then rolling on the pavement. The flames were the only real illumination in the street so far.

John swung the cross shotgun toward the Death demon. But it was nowhere in sight and Dante was gripping both Ebony and Ivory instead of the sword, since it was proving too difficult to get a decent flourish to connect with a creature that could disappear at will.

Then suddenly, several inches of bloodthirsty demon-steel were somersolting toward him; the demon had changed its target, and now John Constantine was certain that his days of meddling really _were_ coming to a bloody slashing end. He squeezed the trigger, unleashing a long arching burst of blue Dragonfire at the oncoming Death; it seemed to catch the entirety of it full in the face, and it slowed down, the whirligig of scythe and Dragonfire grinding to a halt. The voluminous robes had caught, and now the flames were consuming the Death from the bottom edges to the top of its hood. It screamed in a high-pitched, rusty metal voice and pitched itself back and forth, swinging blindly at John. He blocked the deadly steel with part of the cross gun and it knocked him flat on his back.

Finally the Death collapsed into pieces; bits of burning cloak fluttered past John and Dante walked through the burning demonic remains, holding a hand for John to get up.

"Panic's always good, but next time, it might not stop a demon from making you into a side of Diced Exorcist."

"Thanks for the concern, but I think I can handle it." However, two full blasts of Dragonfire pretty much emptied his tank. He was down to holy bullets - and Heaven help him because he wasn't even a good shot at close range most of the time. He took the hand offered, only because he felt like he had been run over by a train.

"It's still dark out. Think you can manage a few more encounters like that one?" Dante slapped a hand on his back. "Don't be afraid. These are all pissants compared to-- Well, lookie here." His voice took on a more interested tone. The cocky boredom was very noticable; he was hardly out of breath, even if his hair now seemed a bit more windblown. With a hand raking through his white locks, he turned to observe a triad of figures materializing a few street lights over. Rather than the swaying, restless Death John had defeated, these three figures stood statue still without moving. Then, in unison, they held out their armored hands, close their thick fingers on spears that appeared with a crackle of energy. The spears elongated with a snap of metal mechanisms. The blades straight and hooked near the base to rend and tear on the pierce.

"What is it?" John hissed. He couldn't see in the dark. "Damn it, Dante, what the hell is it?" Then he could finally see, some paces distant, the rosey glow of those spears. His voice caught in his throat and he leveled the gun at one of them, then back and forth, going in a line. He wouldn't be caught with his pants down again. "Are they... Demons? I've never even seen the ones I've seen today, before."

"We are Demons, indeed." The speech was plain English, but it penetrated the mere weak mortal tissue of eardrums and cochlea and raped the very essence of his mind. John staggered; the answer came as no surprise. "We have come to warn you. John Constantine, Dante Sparda. Come no further in your investigation. Persist and die."

Demons sure are blunt. John glowered from beneath his fringe of black hair. "That's nice of you to warn us, but I know I've made up my mind." He took a bracing breath of chill, Demon-charged air. His arm prickled beneath the bandages; he felt a telling wetness seep into his sleeve.

Dante traded for his guns. His eyes were locked onto those lethal spear points. "Sit this one out, Johnny-boy."

"Your concern is awful _touching_." He stepped behind Dante, all the same. He kept his gun's sight well pointed at the trio. "But we're not alone, remember."

From behind them, several black vans pulled up close and men piled out, guns glittering. Guns might help against a mob of angry human beings, but against Demons, maybe it was just the thought that counted. Heroes swooping into save the day usually didn't do so with forks and knives instead of proper tools.

John also tried to think of maybe his own weapon would do *any* good against these three higher echelon demons. Any encounter with a lower echelon demon did not usually excluded long, involved conversations. This did not necessarily denote stupidity on the demon's behalf. Most demons were prohibited from certain things, based on the person who had decided to call them up from Hell's acidic depths. Bound thus, one can only use their name to set them free or send them back to Hell.

John wondered who had called not one but three of these fine fellows. He wondered if victims of Shadow Dust had sacrificed their bodies to be used as doormats for them to step over to get here.

"Constantine! Dante!" Vascoe and a younger agent ran forward to meet John.

"Meddlers." The threesome of demons susserated at once. With a ringing of steel and the sickening noise of heavy armor screeching, the Demons advanced purposefully like a line of soldiers. The air grew thick with the sickening stink of brimstone. The Angels raised their weapons, firing - and some bullets did appear to have some effect, but there was only so much a 9mm berretta could do, even if it was modified to be effective against demons. The soldier Demons hardly missed a step.

Constantine opened fire on the one that came closest to him. He fired from behind Dante's arm, trying to hide from him; his lips were peeled back in a noiseless grin of determination. Dante's teeth ground so hard they squeaked, because all of a sudden the playing field looking a hell of a lot different.

Why did humans make a situation so much more complicated just by being there?

The soldiers began to spin the spears like propellers - the typical deflecting technique for lead projectiles. So Dante drew his sword, changing technique. He walked forward, letting other bullets pepper his back, holes in his clothes, damn it, and he wound up for a javelin throw.

Rebellion, red-hot, became as white as a burning sun when he fired one bullet after the next into the pommel on its journey in the split-second before it sailed through the spiralling spear and buried itself to the burning hilt into the chest of the middle demon.

This stopped the demon cold, the boney white armored fingers growing slack. But Dante didn't stop for a second. He extended his free hand out and called his sword back; it wrenched itself loose with a sickening metallic squeak and frisbeed back to him.

"Clears up the indigestion," he laughed.

The Demons rushed all at once. John's shotgun clicked - empty. He threw it aside, unable to reconcile any other kind of attack other than bare-fisted. Which would undoubtedly end badly for the exorcist. Dante grabbed the man by the coat, pulled him behind him again and thrust something hard and hot against his hands. The man was dumb-founded at first. He looked down; Ebony sat pure and black and beautiful in his hands, still smoking from the muzzle.

"What are you waiting for?" Dante demanded. "Don't stand there like an idiot!"

John opened his mouth to smart back, but the half-demon seized him up again and leaped clear seventeen feet into the air; John watched with sickening perceptiveness as the ground disappeared. The three demons had closed ranks with the Angels. And now it was up to John to provide some kind of cover fire.

"But I can't--" His stomach bludgeoned his tonsils as he landed again; Dante rushed in without him, leaving him to stand stupidly with the half-demons gun in his hands. "Fuck."

He raised the gun; it was heavy, but as certain as he was a man, he started to shoot. He aimed for whatever he assumed would be a vulnerable spot Demons were like most immortals and thus vulnerable to blows to the head or most decapitation and fire, but unlike immortals, sometimes their weakest points were not what you assumed them to be.

He was not the focus of the demons; luckily, he was ignored as soon as Dante was among them. But Dante could not be in three places at once. Several men became pinned to the pavement like butterfly specimens in less time than it took to blink. So if John ever hit anything, it was by pure lucky that the demons happened to be in front of the cross-hair before they were flitting off to annihilate someone else.

"Constantine!" screamed Vascoe, diving to take cover and avoid notice while he pulled some big and heavy, complicated looking black box from the back of the van he was using as cover. "I'm--"

He couldn't hear him. There was too much noise. Guns went off like crazy, then there was an alarming lull when everyone, simultaneously, ran out of bullets. The only booming report left was the unending stream of ammunition pouring from Dante's Ebony. The three demons had taken almost no damage at all. Dante had been concentrating completely and utterly on saving everyone from danger.

"Run, morons!" Dante shouted at last. "I can't protect everyone!"

"Shit," John rasped, feeling the pressure on his chest building. It was cold, too cold, and his fingers were getting numb--

Suddenly, one of the soldier Demons peeled away from the fray and came rushing at Dante. A second barreled headlong, spear-point glistening crimson, for John.

"Fuck!" He squeezed the trigger, again and again, a pummeling agony in his ears from the gun's constant thunder. "Stop stop stop!"

And the Demon halted. It reeled a moment, just a split-second. John hobbled backward, the gun burning hot in his grip, the metal searing into his fingers. There was gunshot residue staining his fingers and he was coughing from all the smoke, all the blood in the air-

The Demon regained itself and halted back to spear John through his middle like a weiner dog at a Fourth of July barbeque. It was hardly the way he wanted to go out, but if he had to die, he would rather have done it some other way.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N:** I have taken liberties with what Lucifer looks like. Because, in my honest opinion, he looks like however the hell he wants to look. Demons are shapeshifters, liars, and conpeople. Because, after all, he's the father of lies - and his true face might just drive people into institutionalizing themselves. So here's chapter 9 - sorry for the brevity of chapter 8. I was distracted by stuff goin' on and whatnot, and waiting for the right inspiration to drive the rest of this story. Like how to introduce other key players in John's life without making Dante seem flimsy by comparison.

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**Chapter 9**

The spear glistened on the light guttering out of Dante's single shotgun blasts pummeling again and again into the other two Higher Demons making merry with the helpless humans struggling to slide fresh clips into fire arms that had shown the distressing brevity of the human ingenuity's effective radius. Movement became a slow crawl, time decaying each second into a crystal clear slideshow of inevitability. As the spear came crawling through the gun smoke pouring from Ebony's sleek dark muzzle, John had time to reflect.

_I've survived worse things than this_, he thought determinedly. _Surely getting skewered isn't the worst possible thing I can think of that could happen, short of getting my nuts caught in my pants zipper._

Then out of the depths of his mind, there was a face that blotted out the spear. It developed from the smoke, swirling and twisting, revolving like the vortex of a hurricane from space. Resolved itself into a face. The last face in the world John Constantine wanted to see. A painful jolt shook John to his core yet thrilled him at the same time.

"Hello, John," crooned the sibillant Lucifer. "I couldn't help but notice you're about to become a stick ornament."

"Hello, Lucy." The First Fallen looked rather self-assured. John didn't have a clue what it could be about. No, really. It couldn't be that in a few moments, John could be on his merry way to Hell and that's why Lucifer was paying him a visit - greeting his journey with a friendly face to start off. "I'm kind of busy right now, getting turned into John-on-a-Stick and all. Can you leave a message?"

Lucifer continued to smile, but his black eyes resumed their uncanny penetrating stare. John was now in the midst of conversating with the floating ephemeral smoky face of Lucifer as if he were in a fever dream moments before meeting his death. "I'm just excited to see what you'll do to stop this little problem of mine. You see, I have my own plan to win this world. But this is not the way it's done. However, I can't be bothered - family problems at home. And, oh - seeing as how you're already cleaning up this teeny weeny mess, I've decided to leave you to it - and see how long before you break the boundaries of our little agreement."

"What do you mean - break the boundaries?"

"You've gotten full of yourself, taking on such a _big_ load." Lucifer's face twisted into a sadistic little grin. "What a masochistic little pisser you've turned into! I'm sure by the time the world had chewed you up and spat you into my arms, you'll be as dried up as a raisin. But if you decide you want to check out a bit earlier, that can certainly be... _arranged_." The Father of Lies licked his lips in a slow, hungry manner, as if the taste of John Constantine's suffering was the only thing left on his ageless, black little mind.

"I don't know. I think I'd rather prefer to be a recovering stick ornament for now." John became breathless, the pressure of holding onto that moment between one breath and the next crushing, suffocating, radiating pain and discomfort throughout his entire body. Time was slipping out of his tenuous grasp. The moment had gone on for too long, and he felt Lucifer pulling away from him, amused at the human's arrogance and suffering. Then the gunsmoke lost all coherent shape and consistency; a swirl of red wind came roaring around his ears, enveloping all else - and John Constantine felt a piercing sensation in the thick, wet meat of his shoulder and screamed while his vision faded completely to black.

-----

Dante saw everything. The distraction proved just great enough to pull his attention from John Constantine for enough time that, assuming the three Higher Demons were focusing only on the Federal paranormal agents, one of them managed to make a bumrush for the exorcist while he was picking away pathetically with Ebony - a gun that seemed far too big and strong for his fragile human hands. He could almost wince at every broken blood vessel from the kickback, every strained tendon. While he was completing a full piriouette with Rebellion spearing the first Higher Demon through the shoulder and bringing around completely to sever its arm at the elbow, he let out an arrogant bark of laughter. The spear landed point first into the asphalt.

Dante was getting impatient. He heard Vascoe shouting something too but it was all a too-little-too-late kind of thing. Something important later, not a very high priority when the exorcist was screaming and firing that monster gun that was breaking every tiny bone in his hand with every bucking bronco recoil. The Higher Demon currently engaged with Dante staggered, screaming wordlessly in that terrible voice that made most men's ears bleed like needles had been thrust into their eardrums. With a final kick, he turned on his heel away from the falling enemy and charged toward the wall, springing like a jaguar from the pavement. Sheer gravity could not keep the half-demon earthbound, and unearthly momentum drove hi as he ran diagonally along the wall. Beneath him, he could see everything perfectly in the ethereal darkness. The sidewalk was spattered with blood and dusted with a fine layer of charred Death. His eyes traveled to the exorcist. John was actually eclipsed by the swirling knight's cloak and the glint off the tip of the spear as Dante reached into the guitar case still swung across his back. He swung it around to his front in mid-charge, pulled out a second piece of weaponry - a glittering silver-blue three-ended nunchaku. The guitar case skittered and stuck itself into the gutter, safe for now. Not important. Pick it up later.

_John_, he thought. _You think you might be immortal until the time of your death, but if this is your way of getting back at me because of the stunt I pulled... this is going too damn far._

He smelled the particular brand of cigarettes burning in his nose. His throat closed on the words he wanted to scream when he saw the Higher Demon, unimpressed by Ebony's lead rain, rear back with that gorey spear. Instead of screaming, he thrust down the urge to scream helplessly and put it into action - a surge of energy pounding through his arms, legs bunching like a jaguar's, about to take that twenty-foot leap - and he cleared forty feet. Cerberus whipcracked, serrated hooks catching on the thick hood covering the demons face. Dante swung around in a half-circle from the momentum, a vertical pendulum, the cloth twisting around. The nasty talons of Cerberus sank into the Demon's flesh and it screamed.

Dante completed two and a half full circles, the sound of twisting bone and tearing flesh filling the air - but the spear had been thrust forward and nailed Constantine right in the shoulder before Dante landed and pulled with all of his might. The Demon's head was now at a fantastic unnatural angle, which made it much easier for one final tug and the head cracked off like an old walnut. It rolled, revealing nothing more but a face twisted into a perpetual snarl - like those Japanese samurai war masks generals wore to put the fear into their enemies.

The rest of the demon's body crumbled into ash and dust, falling apart more slowly than the Death demon and the demon that had attacked Jackie in her dealer's room.

Dante grabbed John, grabbed the spear by the blade as it stuck half-way out of John's flesh, and pulled. A spurt of hot, human blood made his glove and his hand slippery. He dropped the disintegrating spear with a derogatory curse. Dante snatched black Ebony from John's numb, bruised fingers and holstered it - it was hot against the small of his back. He circled both arms around John's chest, dragging him backward and toward the shelter of the alley. He left him there, putting pressure against his wound, feeling the rising sourness of panic in his throat. _I'm not a doctor_, he thought over and over again. _Worse, I'm not even really human so I don't know how to treat actual wounds_

_You would think I would learn, with all the time I keep on my hands and my closest friends._

John wasn't moving beyond the motion of breathing air. Even then it was quick, gasping little breaths like pain was arresting his natural rhythm to the extreme. If he went into shock, Dante didn't have the faintest clue how to fix it. He hunted demons. His realm of expertise stopped at putting them down like dogs. There was no hope for the Angels, either - and the only hope he had left to figuring out how to stop Shadow Dust was to keep John alive, because he was the only one he presumed could travel freely into Hell and thereby discover its source and stop it from ever coming into this world again.

_Pssh. A human can go to Hell more readily than a half-demon. Crazy world._

So after he was certain the Demons weren't following him - and he had to take several shortcuts and dangerous leaps with John tagging along to ensure that - he doubled back to the apartment where they had all been staying.

The place remained untouched. John's clothes were still in the bag. The entire place from the lobby to the bedroom felt electric, smelled of fresh human perspiration and toothpaste, strangely enough. John was bleeding all over the carpet before he could even get him into the bathroom to take off his clothes. The only Angels left were the ones staying behind to guard and look after the equipment. One of them was the woman whose journal John had kept a looking after. The human pair judged from their expressions that Dante and John were the only ones coming back from this expedition - and John looked like shit.

Once again, John fixed him with a deathglare. "Go back and do something!" he demanded with that terrible accusatory tone. "They can't fight them off."

"That's right," Dante agreed. "They shouldn't have gotten involved. I had everything covered, until the cavalry arrived. That's why they hired us, remember? Look how well you turned out."

"Did you see anything strange?" John whispered, moaning in pain as the half-demon peeled his dress shirt down away from his shoulders, forcing him to flex his arms back. He was sitting on the edge of the bath tub now; the flourescent light hurt his eyes, sent stabbing pain through his temples. Blood looked stark, almost black, on sanitized white porcelaine. His dark hair was stringy with salty sweat and not a single thing he said seemed to sound loud enough in his ears. Was he mumbling? Probably.

Did he care? Not really.

"Like what?" Dante growled, fumbling around in John's suitcase. He pulled out the first aid kit from where John had tossed it right before he had stormed into the bathroom, right before Dante had come in and invaded his space. "Other than your ass getting kicked."

"Nothing." John grimaced as soon as Dante attempted some reasonable bed side manner with a glowing endorsement about his condition.

"I think you're gonna die."

"Thanks, Doctor Demon." John pulled himself together at last, shaking off the haze just long enough to tear off some tape and get a good decent look at what the demon's spear had done to him. It was not only bleeding now but leaking a respectable volume of puss. His eyes blurred and nausea threatened to take him on a trip to the porcelaine throne. He swallowed it down. "It's infected real bad... I'm not sure if medicine will help. Try the peroxide."

Dante knew how to read labels, so he grabbed the first bottle - which happened to be the brown one on the sink. He poured it over his arm. It got on the floor and on John's pants, so now they were both wet and smelly.

"Is it supposed to bubble? Kinda looks unhealthy."

John just blew out air with discomfort with the F consonant, then tipped his head away. "It fucking smells."

"I don't know what else to do." Dante whined over-dramatically - his indication that he was pulling his leg, at least halfway. "I don't have anything, except - except - " He patted around in his pant pockets. "Left my guitar case behind. I'll get it later. Aha!" He pulled something glowing and green from one of his back pockets. It was a star of some kind - a crystalized form of energy the likes of which John Constantine had never seen before. It stank like sulfur, though it was almost sweet as well. Still made him nauseous looking at it.

"It works on me just fine."

"Wh-What do I do with it and how the hell is it supposed to help _me_ then?" John glared at it distrustfully. His heart labored in his chest and he gripped near his wound, squeezing out more puss and various unpleasant-smelling liquids.

"It's a Devil Star. You consume it and it returns a certain level of well-being back to ya. I don't get how they work either, but whenever I find 'em I use them whenever I get banged up pretty bad."

"I'd hate to see you get banged up, if this is how I look when I just get poked."

"Just eat it."

"Eat it?"

"You're poisoned; do you wanna die or do you wanna eat the funky devil food?"

"I don't really feel like eating food from an alternate reality, thanks."

"Do you want to stay like this, or you want to get back on track - without the skewering?"

John closed his eyes. The pain was still just barely manageable. A few tylenol and he would be just marvy. But no way was he about to eat that damn piece of funky green shit.

"If you eat a piece," John growled through gritted teeth. "I'll have some as long as you have some too."

"You DO realize that even if it IS poison, it won't kill me as much as it will kill you. And in order for it to work, if it was healing, you would have to eat the WHOLE thing."

John clenched his blood-stained fingers. "Fine. Fine. I'll eat it. Just give it to me."

"So long as you say ah."

So Dante fed John Constantine little chunks of the Devil Star until it was all gone. Each time, Constantine made a face as if he were eating something three times as sour as lemon rinds, struggling against the urge to just spit it out again. Perhaps the potent Devil Star was too strong. In a few minutes, though, the puss ceased to flow and even his wound began to close over with some astounding celerity. The two sat in silence for a long time.

Finally John rubbed at his own face, groaning with discouragement.

"They're all dead. They've got to be. Every single one!"

Dante's head fell, shaggy white hair covering his eyes but not the way his mouth drew tight in a frown. John tried to figure out what Dante was upset about the most - being unable to save at least one Angel agent or being unable to bring at least one piece of evidence back from the encounter. All they knew at this point was some serious major powers were at stake. If whoever in Hell or on Earth had sent three powerful Higher Demons to drive away Dante and John Constantine, then it was an operation that had a lot at stake - too much for one group of well-to-do, government trained paranormal "experts" to handle.

Funny thing about demons, too. Where there was one, there was always more. And when there's more than one, there's more trouble than a bunch of humans should get into. However, the fact that so many lives had just been lost gave Dante a bit of a jolt. He had come to like the little rag tag group of folks. The only ones left to survive were the ones keeping watch on Jackie and they were probably too busy hammering away a report to their government superiors about how royally, utterly, unequivocably screwed every one of them was. If it wasn't their lives about to kick the can, it was their souls going to rot in the eternal bowels of Hell, assigned a particular torment to eat away at their minds for the rest of God's eternity.

So John stood up and threw on his shirt and jacket once again, swayed a bit with a rocking dizziness that almost swept him off his feet, and coughed, "Let's find Jackie and get her and whoever else has a death wish to get back there."

"Go back?" Dante snorted. "What the hell do you wanna go back for? Do you think those Devil Stars come cheap? Hell, no! They get more expensive the more I try to buy 'em. And it's not like they're just lying around like garbage." The half-demon stood up. "No. I'm taking Jackie, and you're on the first flight back to New York."

John Constantine stood up and grabbed the half-demon by the coat collar, growling, "Over my stinking corpse, half-breed. How many ways do I have to say it? This is _my_ case. _Not yours_. You're just tagging along being all entertained? I didn't ask for you. I didn't ask for anything." A hot, bubbling fire rose just under his breastbone; Constantine was willing to bet it was rage and not just acid reflux again. "I--"

There was a peculiar beeping noise. John hesitated, as if he thought the sound familiar. Then he ran to his suitcase and answered his cell phone at last, and his heart practically leapt for joy.

"Constantine, why the fuck haven't you been answering!? I've been calling you all night! I've got some more news. It's great stuff, John, it might help you out. Okay. So, I'm a genius and generally awesome and stuff, right?"

"Uh." John fumbled for cigarettes, balancing the cell phone between his ear and his shoulder. The position made his entire left side cramp. Dante leaned in the bathroom doorway, his head cocked like that of a dog hearing the tell-tale familiar decibels of a dinner bell. He was listening to the voice on the phone of course.

"I'll take that as a yes. So, um, I found out something. Did a little digging. Turned up some real gold about the origin of Shadow Dust. It was used a long time ago in ancient rituals to commit one's soul to a Demon's, but in order to do so, someone had to use a powerful demon's essence to produce it. Crystalizing demon chunks, basically. Ingested or used any other way, you turn into a mannequin for any demon to just walk in and use like a suit rental."

"We already figured that out; anything else?"

"They don't use the ritual these days. I keep reading about these things called 'potentialers'. Things that are older than the legend of Sparda. These things can only exist in Hell... but they're said to unleash the potential in anything related to Hell."

"What exactly does that mean?"

"I don't know! That's what you're supposed to find out!"

"It was a rhetorical question. I know." There was a long, heavy pause and John ground his teeth while he fingered his pack of cigarettes. "Thank you. Talk to you again soon. And please... if you value your life... be_ careful_."

"I will, Mr. Constantine. You take care, too. You sound a bit rough - are you sure that Dante guy is looking after you?"

John sucked in a breath to snarl that no, once again, he did not need looking after. His cheeks flushed red, which made him dizzy because he had lost some blood. Then he turned and glared at Dante, as if it was somehow entirely his fault. He said, in clipped brief syllables, "Take care, kid." Then he hung up. The phone disappeared into his coat.

"Let's get Jackie. We can argue about what to do next from there. All right?"

As soon as they stepped into the hallway, the two humans left looked at Dante, not John, for some kind of direction.

"Write a report. And tell the boys holding Jacquelyn that we're coming to get her, ASAP."

"W-Where is everyone else?"

"Vascoe is - who knows where. But I can assure you, everyone else is dead." John puffed anxiously at a cigarette - when had he even lit one up? The nervous inflection in his voice gave his emotions clearly away. "And as soon as you're done with that, get the hell away from here as fast as you possibly can."


End file.
